Poetry Home Burial Analysis & Summary by Robert Frost
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Analysis
Home Burial is a dramatic narrative. This poem of Robert Frost was first published in "North of Boston". Frost had a general dislike for free verse. This poem is written Blank Verse and the meter is iambic pentameter. One can also say that the poem is a lyric narrative.
The poem has a young married couple as characters. The poem begins in a tightly knit setting. The dialogues of the husband and the wife are natural sounding. The whole poem reads like a short story.
Many have argued that the poem deals with a marriage falling apart due to grief and anger but it is more about an existential concern which the wife suggests towards the end that no matter how we pretend in this world, we are naturally alone in our life and death.
The poem portrays the rural set up in which husband and wife have recently buried their only child. Both of them are suffering but both are unable to understand the different ways of their mourning. In a wider sense, the poet also contemplates the nature of the relationship between both genders and how they misinterpret each other most of the time.
The narration slowly associates with the themes of loss, anger, blame, and denial. John Robert Doyle wrote that this poem "examines the relationship between the living and the dead."
Both husband and wife after losing their only child are unable to process their grief. The wife has secluded into herself and the husband is constantly trying to make her share her feelings with him.
His every attempt becomes offensive for her because of his manly lack of empathy and choice of words. It makes him look like being insensitive towards the death of their child.
Frost's sentences always depict the tone of voice. In this poem, the dialogues are precisely written. The despair of wife and husband towards each other is expressed with all the subtilties.
When the husband is describing the graveyard of the family, the wife bursts out the moment he describes their child's mound. She shouts "don't, don't, don't, don't," and it effectively describes the depth of pain which she feels from the loss.
Her physical postures are described in the poem in such a way that we get to understand the emotional state in which she is.
The husband repeats twice "Can't a man speak of his own child?" It depicts his attempt to express what he truly feels but is unable to show the way his wife does. It is the difference in the manner of their suffering.
When the husband is unable to express in words, the wife suffers vividly. Out of despair, the husband says that A man must partly give up being a man with women-folk. In such an atmosphere, the wife feels suffocated and wants to get some air.
The husband and the wife are characterized here in their traditional gender roles. Even when they speak openly, they are unable to communicate. In the end, the wife contemplates on the essentiality which the idea of death brings.
Even the friends who talk of following to the grave, have their own life to indulge in. So, no one suffers truly for the dead because the ones who are alive can never have truly the time to suffer for the dead.
The image of the graveyard depicted by the husband is sharp imagery in the poem. The wife gives the image of the digging husband. Such minor descriptions give us a sense of what is going through the mind of the characters.
The poem shows us the state of human relationships and its relation to the inevitable fact of death. It shows how death brings out the reality from the detailed pretension which human beings make in their lives.
Summary
Introduction
Home Burial is a poem written by Robert Frost. It is one of the most anthologized poems of Frost. It was first published in "North of Boston" in 1914. The poem deals with the marriage of a couple and the intricate way through which it may fall apart.
It expresses our feeling of loss which leads us to anger, denial and blame. It tells us of the relationship between the living and the dead.
The poem is a dramatic narrative. It is written in blank verse which has no rhyme but sticks to a meter. The poem is written in iambic pentameter. It is a lyric narrative that reads almost like a short story.
Lines 1 - 17
The poem begins as a narration of a story. The setting is rural. The husband and wife have buried their child recently. It was their only child. The husband is looking at his wife. She is coming down to leave for someplace.
There must have been a fight between these two. She is looking back over her shoulder at some fear. The husband is curious about this terrified behavior of his wife. So, he asks that "what is it you see from up there always" and he keeps insisting.
His wife's silence must be bothering him too much. So, he insists again that he will find out now. She remains silent so the husband starts assuming. There is a clear sign of misinterpretation from both sides. Both are probably too sad to understand each other so they are always on the edge to blame each other.
Line 18-46
The husband says that now he understands that what she might be looking at or why she must be feeling so. He starts referring to the child's mound. This is when the wife starts bursting.
The mere mention of their child's grave summons all her fear and sadness. She sits down and her whole-body posture changes. She has no control over her body in such grief. The husband is too rough while talking about their child so the wife thinks that he doesn't feel anything.
She feels like grief is felt by her alone because her husband looks so objective while mentioning their child's death. The husband replies that "can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?" and the wife replies that "not you."
She is in complete mourning. Her state of grief doesn't allow her to even listen about her child's death from anyone, not even her husband. This is the denial part which human beings face after the death of their closed ones.
The husband requests her to stop going out of the house. He requests her to let him speak. She is questioning the tone of her husband which shows no grief the way her own voice does.
Both man and woman are unable to understand that their way of expressing grief is much different. A man suffers differently than a woman. So, she says that "you don't know how to ask it."
Line 47- 72
The husband is trying to understand so he asks her to help him express the way she wants him to. He is intrigued by this whole incident. He is unable to understand that how can everything he says to her sounds offensive to her.
He is willing to learn her way of speaking. Out of confusion, he says that a man must partly give up being a man with women-folk. He asks her to teach him so that he won’t say anything which she minds.
She is about to leave so the husband implores her again to not go. He also wants to share the grief the same way she does. He demands the chance. The husband is unable to empathize with her so he asks her again that what is it that makes her take her mother-loss of a first child so inconsolably in the face of love.
Line 73-100
The wife is again offended by the husband's tone of contempt. He becomes desperate for why he can not talk about his own child. The wife accuses him of being indifferent to their child's death.
She accuses him that he doesn't feel anything. She describes how coldly he was digging the grave without any hint of grief on his face. She was surprised the way her husband could talk about their daily affairs even while digging the grave.
She could not understand why her husband was so feeling-less. She repeats what the husband had said then regarding the best birch fence. She believes that he simply didn't care about their child.
Line 101- 123
The wife starts talking about the nature of death and how people don't feel the loss the way they pretend about it. Normal people who call themselves friends make a pretense of following to the grave when actually all they can think of is their own life.
She believes the world's evil. She doesn't want to suffer from such a world. The husband after listening to all this thinks that now that she has expressed her anger, she will be alright.
He says that now that you have said it all, you feel better. It infuriates his wife further. She shouts again that you think the talk is all. Both misinterpret each other further. She opens the door to leave without knowing where to go.
So, the husband asks her where exactly she is supposed to go. He shouts in the end that in case she leaves then he will follow and bring her back by force.
The poem dramatically describes the whole issue of human relationships where human beings are unable to understand each other, especially when they are under the pressure of some tremendous grief or disappointment.
