Reading a story or poem about death is usually sad and overtly predictable. However, Seamus Heaney inverts this mundane typicality to deliver a poem shrouded in mystery. The main aspects of Heaney's poem Mid-Term Break are the development of the plot and the way the diction sets the dark tone that slowly reveals the mystery. One technique Heaney uses is diction, which helps in developing the plot. In the first verse he uses words that lengthen the verse and make it seem to last a long time. In the first line the use of the word drags the entire line. The sense of time is evident in this first verse. The second line, Counting the bells that ring to end the lessons, uses words that describe him listening and counting the bells that signal the end of the lesson. This use of description emphasizes or supports the previous line; I sat in the college infirmary all morning. Finally the reader is given an hour: At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home. The fact that the neighbors accompanied him home makes the reader wonder why this is so. Up to this point the reader is unaware that a death in the family is the reason for the boy's return home. It could be that the boy himself is ill. In the second verse the boy is at home and sees his father crying. The reader now knows that someone has died, but who is still a mystery. The use of hyphens at the end of the first two lines of the second verse helps to lengthen the verse similarly to the first verse but in a darker way. The pause after the father cries gives the reader a glimpse of what is happening. Then the dash after the funeral with its rhythm, pauses to create a really dark tone. The last line of the third verse, and Big Jim Evans saying it was… in the middle of the paper… box. The plot is almost completely revealed but there is still the final line, A four foot box, one foot for each year. All mysteries are revealed with this last line. The last line shocks when the reader finds out that the boy's four-year-old brother has been killed. The reader also discovers in the penultimate line that a car has hit him. The structure that Heaney uses in this poem is what makes the poem intriguing. If he stated in the first stanza that the boy's little brother has died and that he is leaving school to go see him, the poem would be just another poem about death. Heaney slowly reveals the situation through the gradual development of the plot. The tone and plot development lead to the shocking punchline, a four-foot box, one foot for each year. It is only in the last line that the reader knows that the deceased is the narrator's four-year-old brother..