"Home Burial" by Robert Frost

                                                         

Robert Frost wrote the poem Home Burial after he and his wife suffered the tragic loss of their 4-year-old son. Home Burial shows the emotions people feel after such a loss, and how they face those emotions. Through Frost's experience he shows that men and women grieve in different ways. 

Home Burial is a great narrative poem of Robert Frost. In this poem he has described an anxious conversation between a rural husband and wife whose child has recently died. In the beginning of the poem, the wife is standing at the top of a staircase looking at her child’s grave through the window. Her husband, at the bottom of the stairs, does not understand what she is looking at or why she has suddenly become so distressed. The wife dislikes her husband’s obliviousness and attempts to leave the house. The husband begs her to stay and talk to him about her sorrow. He does not understand why she is angry with him for expressing his pain in a different way. Despairing, the wife whips out at him, convinced of his apathy toward their dead child. The husband mildly accepts her anger, but the rift between them remains. She leaves the house as he angrily threatens to drag her back by force.

Somebody think that it is a poem about the love of a mother to her child. A mother gives a child and takes with great care of it; but unfortunately after some days it dies. So, the lady has lost her all hopes. Gradually she becomes very excited and sorrowful but her husband is very normal. He buries his child and does all the activities very easily and normally. He does not face any type of problem. According to his view, it is the rule of nature and nobody can escape it. So, he is very easy and normal but his wife does not agree with him. Gradually, the wife is very angry for the activities of her husband. So, she does not want to stay with him in this house because his husband has buried her child in this house. She cannot endure it easily, so she takes preparation to leave the house. But her husband tries his best to stop her departure. At last the wife leaves the house. 

  

Development of Thought: In this poem the poet has described about two tragedies: first, the death of a young child, and second, the death of a marriage. As such, the title “Home Burial,” can be read as a tragic double entendre. Although the death of the child is the substance of the couple’s problems, the larger clash that destroys the marriage is the couple’s inability to interconnect with each other.  The husband is more accepting of the natural cycle of life and death in general, but also chooses to grieve in a more physical manner: by digging the grave for his child. Ironically, the husband’s expression of his grief is completely misunderstood by the wife.