“Home Burial” – Robert Frost

About the Author:

Robert Lee frost was a great American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life. “Home Burial” is one of the greatest creation of him.

In this poem “Home Burial”. Robert Frost explores the theme of grief and its determental effects on the human mind through two married characters coping with their child’s death.

Speaker: Amy; husband; narrator

Conflict: Wife believes that husband doesn’t understand

Key line:

“You can’t because you don’t know how to speak.”

The setting of the poem is a staircase with a door at the bottom and a window at the top. The wife stands at the top of the stairs, directly in front of the window overlooking the graveyard. The husband stands at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her.

This poem portrays the failure of communication between the married couple, and failure to appreciate the way in which each is grieving. In this poem Frost described an anxious conversation between a rural husband and wife whose child has recently died. Wife is standing and looking at her child’s grave through the window. It is a poem about the love of a mother to her child. She has lost her all hopes. She becomes very excited and sorrowful but her husband is very normal. He think that, 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. She does not want to stay with him in this house because his husband has buried her child in this house.

This poem seems to be addressing the theme of how humans respond to death and emotion. We know that death is unavoidable and happens to everyone, yet we still experience extreme sadness when we lose a loved one. Humans crave comfort and understanding from one another during times of grief; however, we’re with can’t provide these needs, we almost instantly feel angry and want to separate from that person.

As we approach the end of the poem, we can see how the husband finally runs out of patience and tells her to stay and if she does do it, he will go after her and bring her back by force. He is willing to do everything it takes to make her wife stay at home, even against her will.