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##k Of Communication In Robert Frost's Mending Wall And Home Burial

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Robert Frost’s poems “Mending Wall” and “Home Burial” both represent Frost’s attempt to explicate how conflict and lack of communication ultimately leads to despondency and inefficient relationships. These poems explore the fundamental concepts that are necessary to create and maintain a healthy relationship with others, as well as the natural tendencies of humans when reacting to societal issues.

In Frost’s famous poem “Home Burial”, Frost explicates the working relationship of a husband and wife soon after the death of their child. Frost uses a family in the face of adversity to show that men and women grieve in different ways. In the first three lines of this poem “He saw her from the bottom of the stairs Before she saw him. She was starting down, Looking back over her shoulder at some fear.” shows the initial separation between the characters, the wife at the top of the stairs, and the husband at the bottom. Frost included the placement of the characters in the beginning of the poem so the reader could understand the emotional barrier that exists between them. Frost included the words “looking back over her shoulder at some fear” to give a female’s perception of how some problems seem impossible to escape from. Normally we do not look back on what we leave in the past, unless we feel more than fear. The next two lines “She took a doubtful step and then undid it, To raise herself and look again” Frost wants the reader to key in on the fact that her attention is elsewhere, perhaps, outside the house. Her husband becomes impatient “What is it you see From up there always—for I want to know” and several lines later stresses his impatience with “I will find out now—you must tell me, dear.” The husband’s tone has turned demanding, adding unnecessary pressure to the situation. The wife becomes annoyed with her husband’s nagging attempts to communicate with her, “She, in her place, refused him any help With the least stiffening of her neck and silence. She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see” The husband notices their child’s grave from the window, “Just that I see.”, “You don’t,” she challenged. She views her husband as a “blind creature”, or as someone who cannot attempt to sympathize, because

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