Home Burial

She was staring at his chest, blindly, not knowing what to think, not thinking at all. He lifter her chin, gently. “Look at me Faye.” She did, but his face was a blur. “Faye, we’re in this together—you and I. Don’t you see that? It’s not just your problem, it’s ours.” In “A Sorrowful Woman”, I found the husband’s nurturing ways most appealing. He completely rearranged his life to make sure that his wife was as comfortable as possible. The passage that most signifies this is found on page 41. With great care he rearranged his life. He got up hours early, did the shopping, cooked the breakfast, took the boy to nursery school. “We will manage,” he said, “until you’re better, however long that is.” He did his work, collected the boy from the school, came home and made the supper, washed the dishes, got the child to bed. He managed everything. One evening, just as she was on the verge of swallowing her draught, there was a timid knock on her door. The little boy came in wearing his pajamas. “Daddy has fallen asleep on my bed and I can’t get in. There’s not room.” In “A Sorrowful Woman” what I found most unappealing was that even though the husband clearly loved her, instead of getting her the help she clearly needed, he let her sickness overcome her.

In "A Sorrowful Woman" the wife is depressed with her life, so much so, "The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to see them ever again"(p.1). This wife and mother has come to detest her life, the sight of her family,

Furthermore, “The Wife's Lament” is about a wife who remembers happy days with her husband. The wife in the poem is alone and sad because she was forced away from her home by her husband. Similar to the other two poems, the speaker uses weather for their images for example “ my beloved sits under a rocky cliff rimed with frost”(47-48). What the quote mean is that the wife is hoping that her husband freezes.

The woman in the poem shows us the anger she is feeling is directed at her husband. The

Conversely, the rest of the poem, “ If ought she missed in her new day, of amplitude, or awe –or first prospective – or the gold in using wear away, It lay unmentioned – as the sea develop pearl, and weed, but to himself – be known the fathoms they abide—“ the dictionary refers to “amplitude” as an extreme or phenomenon and the word “awe” as wonder, and as it refers to “prospective” as something expected to come about, like being a future mother. The words helped understand the woman’s losses and gains of marriage. Nevertheless, normal progress of a typical wife seen after a length of time.

“Divorce”, hinges on a metaphor that relates to this couple as concerned with flatware. The two verses, describe both the association of the two people, for example the two lines together represents their marriage and the two verses apart represent separation, it represents the couple going through a divorce. The second line “now tined forks/” enjambs onto the second section which is the third line. “Across a granite table,” making the reader feel the emotional and real gap between the forks/people and leaving them to wait on the hardness and coldness of the granite. He even went as far as to split the entire poem in two to instill the impression of separation. The shortness of the poem is equivocalness. It implies the short speech and quietness that can live between a divorcing couple as well as the decrease of them talking to one another. They now only speak to each other through their lawyers.

The father’s way of dealing with his inner issues is reflected by the way he distracts himself with hobbies of the women he loves. This illustrates how a sudden tragedy can influence someone’s lifestyle. In fact, before his first wife passed away he showed a lot of interest in art and when she died he was lost and devastated ,” (…) after mom died, my sister and I used to worry about his living alone. And he was lonely.We knew that after putting in his usual twelve-hours workday, he would return to the empty house (...) then read medical journals until it was time to go to sleep.”(16). This implies that

Slessor's poems are concerned with the progression of time and its consequences. Both Beach Burial and country towns illustrate their messages through language, techniques, such as onomatopoeia, alliteration, imagery and emotive language. Beach burials display a sign that time is precious; but, Country towns contrasts this by illustrating a slow-paced time. Country towns display a deserted town as the text showcases the town barely being active and very slow paced. Both poems contradict each other as both are significantly different. Beach Burial defines time as precious because Country Towns displays the lack of time and the minimal care towards it.

The main aspect of the poem is the obvious tone shift from lighthearted comedy to contemplating sadness, starting slowly between the second and third stanza and slowly building up more and more as the poem continues. This foil accentuates the emotion of the poem, making the ending all the sadder. This sadness becoming evident in the last stanza of the poem, where the couplet pattern breaks in an

The mother's road to finding closure over her son's death is much longer than her husband's. Her feelings throughout the poem are of

Some of the main topics in a large number of poems are life, death, war and love. The two poems Men in Green and Beach Burial have a similar topic of war and its effects on people. David Campbells Men in Green is about a group of Australian soldiers experiencing war in Papua New Guinea while Kenneth Slessor's Beach Burial is about the loss of life through war regardless of what side you are fighting for. Men in Green's form is a dramatic monologue whereas the structure of Beach Burial is an elegy. Similes are used frequently in Men in Green and Beach Burial regularly uses onomatopoeia and the language gets harsher as the poem goes on. Even though these two poems are both about war, there are many differences including the atmosphere, use of

In both pieces she wishes to be detached from love and responsibility, yet as the poem progresses, she has a change of heart, almost an epiphany.

The relationship between the wife and husband is still alive. Through the description of the poem we see that the wife does not see her husband as a dead body. She treats her husband’s body as something alive that feels every touch. In the middle of the first stanza, phrases like, “She took her time”, “She washed each finger”, and “Cleaning underneath

is saying, and Frosts personal pain that he is suffering from that he ingrains into this poem. The

In “Home Burial”, Frost is using the characters in the story as a vehicle to play out the hard times he himself encounters when his children died. The story has an uncanny resemblance to his life during the time when he and his wife were dealing with their son’s death.