Robert Frost Home Burial

The poem “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime” is a poem about a women who has lost her husband of thirty five years. Williams writes in the voice of a grieving woman instead of in his own voice. Now that her husband has died, the widow cannot find joy in her yard that she used to love. The widow may even be considering suicide. Williams, writing in free verse, writes a metaphor comparing the grief of a widow to her blooming yard in the springtime setting a tone of great sadness for the widow.

Death is something that at some point will come to each of us and has been explored in many forms of literature. “The Raven” and “Incident in a Rose Garden” are two poems that explore common beliefs and misconceptions about death. Though both poems differ in setting, tone, and mood there are surprising similarities in the literary tools they use and in the messages they attempt to convey. The setting and mood establish the tone and feel of a poem. In “The Raven” we are launched into a bleak and dreary winters night where a depressed narrator pines for his dead girlfriend.

Since the date of Robert's birth in 1874, Frost experienced great affliction through his life. On May 5, 1885 his father died of tuberculosis leaving 8 dollars to the family's name at the age of eleven. While married at the age of twenty-one, four of his six children died through their suicide or disease. Irma, Frost's fourth child, out lived frost in a mental hospital. His younger sister Jeanie also bound in a mental hospital had passed in 1929. Lesley, the second child of Frost, out lived Frost, marrying twice and wrote a few children books. Unfortunately, Frost continued to endure loss when his mother and his wife, Elinor, developed cancer passing soon after the diagnosis.

Authors tend to write on subjects that they know the most about, or subjects that affect them on a personal level. Authors and poets use various aspects of life for the basis of their works, such as life experiences, romances, and family roles. Poems like “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden and “Forgiving My Father” by Lucille Clifton feature one of the most important roles in a family: a father. The two poems differ vastly in many regards, but many similarities surface among them and a common theme resides between them. Through the similarities they hold, the poems represent a common theme of regret for one’s lack of action.

Although it seems paradoxical to love someone and then kill him, Brooks makes it easy for readers to believe that this is what the speaker actually did. She writes of those special moments that only a mother can understand: “scuttle off ghosts…control [the mother’s] luscious sigh…return for a snack of them with gobbling mother-eye” (8-10). A mother will brave ghosts and monsters (real or imagined) for her child, and sometimes it takes amazing self-control to simply stop staring in disbelief at the beauty of the child you have created. When my son was a baby, I used to sit behind him and just breathe in his lavender baby-smell. I felt like I could “gobble him up,” and I still do – but he, of course, won’t let me now. At 8-years-old he is a “big boy.” Brooks has somehow made the reader remember and re-live the good and beautiful aspects of having a baby; and yet, the poem is about abortion. By creating such a nostalgic mood in the reader, Brooks again takes the focus off of the terrible act of murder and waits until the second stanza to address the speaker’s regrets. With the nostalgic mood carrying over from stanza-one, the shift in stanza two works because the reader has already forgiven the persona for her sins. And yet, in answer to the readers who still have a difficult time accepting the harsh reality of the poem, Brooks makes a convincing argument in this second stanza, claiming that she still thinks about her babies, she

It can be difficult for a persona to understand a different perspective. The 1914 blank verse poem, Home Burial, by Robert Frost explores the death of a child and the consequences of this disturbing event on a mother and father. The poem is set at the burgeoning of WWI in pre-war western society. At its core this text explores the gender stereotypes of its time. The mother and father embody the two differing representations of grief over their child’s death. After a brief introduction, the text consists of mostly dialogue which gives the audience an insight into the emotional rift between two personas and their different experiences in dealing with the emotional consequences of death. The husband questions the emotional response of his wife using a demanding tone, desperate to try and understand the reasons for her longing actions “What is it you see From up there always- for

He seems to suggest here that grief is but an illusion, because man is incapable of touching the human soul. Emerson continued with, “Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate, - no more. I cannot get it nearer to me.” Now, Emerson reveals his inspiration for writing Experience. With the death of his son, Emerson had suffered the fourth major loss in his family, which had been long plagued by tuberculosis. His first wife died of the disease and had claimed the lives of his two beloved brothers. Emerson was no stranger to grief, and the more he tried to psychoanalyze it, the emptier he felt. After sustaining so much loss, one must steel oneself from any further blows.

“Home Burial” is mostly about a tense conversation between a husband and wife who recently buried their child. They show their grief and anger at the situation with insensitive words, such as the intimidating tone for ‘dear’. The wife is clearly upset after seeing the burial site of her child out of the window. This discovery is confronting but also fresh and meaningful as she is emotional and she wants to know why her husband is not showing grief. Frost illustrates a couple of broken structures in the poem. “What is it – what? She said. “Just that I see.” This quote is an example of the broken structure, it’s a metaphor for their relationship, which the title of the poem is also foreshadowing the collapse of their marriage. “A man must partly give up being a man with womenfolk.” This quote is juxtaposed with men and women used to show their divide between the husband and wife. “Two that don’t love can’t live together with them. But two that do can’t live together with them.” Is a paradox, it reveals the truth about their lives but they can’t resolve their broken relationship. The wife confronts the husband, “Who is that man? I didn’t know you.” This quote is visual imagery as she was looking at her husband digging the grave. She made the confronting discovery that had influenced her original thoughts of her husband. This poem links to the confronting discovery by showing the husband and wife’s different perspectives on their dead son and no matter how much the husband tries to understand her, they can’t mend their relationship. This discovery is also in “Will Grayson, Will Grayson”, as it can relate to “Home Burial” with a broken relationship. There are two Will Graysons with relationship problems with the same person, Tiny Cooper. The first Will’s relationship with Tiny is that they

How do the writers present the traumatic death of a child in ‘Whistle and I’ll come to you’ by Susan Hill and ‘Out, Out’ by Robert Frost. ‘Out, Out-’ by Robert Frost written in the close years post World-War, tells the story of a young boy who loses his life working wood. Frost uses this poem to spread but also criticize the sad reality of children being forced into grown-up situations. On the other hand, Susan Hill’s ‘Woman in Black’ describes the haunting soul and presence of another deceased boy who died in a cart incident. While for Robert Frost’s protagonist we feel empathy and sorrow, Susan Hill writes her story for the reader to fear the mysterious boy who seems to haunt the grounds of the house.

The poem that I have selected for this essay is “Talking to Grief” by Denise Levertov. I chose this poem because it talks about grief. It also talks about the place that grief should have in a person’s life. The poem describes grief, and compares it to a “homeless dog.” It also describes how a dog deserves its own place in the house, instead of living under a porch or being homeless. This poem talks about how a person can be aware that grief is present, but that it is not always acknowledged and accepted. We all experience grief in different ways, and for different reasons. Everyone deals with grief in their own personal way. This poem describes a point in a person’s life when they are ready to accept grief as a part of their life

The death of a parent is never an easy thing to go through it is heartbreaking and overwhelming, but it is a different story when parent and child aren’t on the best of terms or possibly never really got to know each other. As a result of the parent passing it can cause the child to be haunted by the past always hoping their relationship could change. Once the parent passes it is impossible to reconcile any issues. The only option is to learn to forgive or forget any wrong doings and move on with life. Poets Lucille Clifton and Sylvia Plath both have poems that address this in very powerful and beautifully written ways. Both of their poems depict a speaker process of gaining freedom from their fathers after they have passed.

In the poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, by Emily Dickinson and “Home Burial”, by Robert Frost, literary elements are used throughout both poems to get the message the authors are trying to portray. One main important literary element that is used to entice the reader, is symbolism, because it helps the authors describe something without actual describing it. Symbolism is also used because it shows how significant an object is. Characterization is also an important literary technique because it, gives the reader an idea on how the character would act, work, and their values in life. Death is a topic that is used in both poems. Also, every character express their opinion about death differently.

Poems are like snowflakes. While no two are the same, they all have common structures and themes. One prevalent theme in poetry is that of death, which is present in both “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. Dickinson perceives death as a gentleman, while Frost perceives death as loneliness, which provides insight on how the time periods of the poems, the genders of the authors, and the authors’ personal experiences influence literature.

Many of Robert Frost’s poems and short stories are a reflection of his personal life and events. Frost’s short story “Home Burial” emulates his experience living on a farm and the death of two of his sons. Frost gives an intimate view into the life and mind of a married couples’ struggle with grief and the strain it causes to their marriage. The characters Frost describes are synonymous, physically and emotionally, to his own life events.

Robert Frost's "Home Burial" is a tragic poem about a young life cut short and the breakdown of a marriage and family. The poem is considered to be greatly inspired and "spurred by the Frosts' loss of their first child to cholera at age 3" (Romano 2). The complex relationship between husband and wife after their child's death is explored in detail and is displayed truthfully. Among many others, the range of emotions exhibited includes grief, isolation, acceptance, and rejection. The differences in the characters emotions and reactions are evident. The husband and wife in Robert Frost's "Home Burial" react to their son's death in stereotypical fashion and interact with each other with difficulty and resistance.