Visual Imagery in Frost's Home Burial Essay

Both poets, Frost and Heaney wrote in the pastoral tradition, drawing on the natural landscape of Bellaghy, Co Derry and Frost and the farmland of New England, Massachusetts. Respectively Frost is an influence on Heaney evident in the ‘sound of sense’ and Heaney borrowed the Frostian voice of rural vernacular with his use of unadorned language and natural speech rhythms, giving both poets work a conversational intimacy. Likewise, both poets used the everyday quotidian to illuminate universal truths and to extrapolate deeper meanings from ordinary. Similarly they used interactions with the natural world to produce profound revelations about the past, mortality, human loss, childhood, the creative process, journeys and self-discovery.

Self-discovery is often accompanied by internal metacognitive dialogue due to its ability to allow individuals to re-evaluate their outlook on life and develop a better understanding of the world. Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods’, his 1922 lyric poem provides a pre-eminent example of an internal monologue. Use of first person present tense language allows for the reader to relish the quiet splendour of the dark woods and ponder, if only for a moment, the allure of escaping indefinitely from the exhausting world of people and promises. The confronting and emotionally significant discovery of the persona’s morbid attraction to oblivion is conveyed through the furtive tone in the first stanza “He will not see me stopping here/ to watch this wood fill up with snow” suggesting a feeling of delight that may be associated with the deep, dark woods. Potent connotations of the words ‘dark’,

The Use of Literary Devices in Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

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

Robert Frost’s poem “Home Burial,” written in 1914, centers around the conversation of a married couple whose relationship is struggling after the death of their young child. A duality in meaning exists in the poem’s title, “Home Burial,” which references not only the death of their child but also the death of their marriage. Is the child’s death the sole cause of their marital distress? Robert Frost opens the poem in the couple’s home with the husband watching as his wife, Amy, begins to descend the staircase (1-2). After a few verses, the audience has become witnesses to the marriage’s descent into nothingness. The child’s grave lies forever in the background, framed by a small window at the top of the stairs (Frost 24-31). In Robert Frost’s “Home Burial”, the marriage of Amy and her husband is irreparable due to differences in expression, acceptance, and perception.

“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

Robert Frost's deeply-rooted beliefs in nature influence him to view death positively. Through enticing images of solitude

The early and later life of Robert Frost was entailed with many hardships that influenced a variety of themes and key concepts within his works such as thematic ideas surrounding the simple pleasures taken for granted in life until they disappear, evident in Frost's poem "Birches," and city life opposed to farm life, evident in "Acquainted with the Night." Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California to William Prescott Frost Jr and Isabelle Moody Frost. The two had on other child, Jeanie Frost, in 1876 when their son was two. Frost childhood was pervaded with hardships stemming mostly from the actions of his father. Frost's father was an alcoholic who drank and gambled the family's funds into oblivion while exercising

Frost incorporates his personal experiences with loss and his views on society into the narrative

Robert Frost is an iconic poet in American literature today, and is seen as one of the most well known, popular, or respected twentieth century American poets. In his lifetime, Frost received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, and the Congressional Gold Medal. However, Robert Frost’s life was not always full of fame and wealth; he had a very difficult life from the very beginning. At age 11, his father died of tuberculosis; fifteen years later, his mother died of cancer. Frost committed his younger sister to a mental hospital, and many years later, committed his own daughter to a mental hospital as well. Both Robert and his wife Elinor suffered from depression throughout their lives, but considering the premature deaths of three of their children and the suicide of another, both maintained sanity very well. (1)

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.

Poetry is a literary medium which often resonates with the responder on a personal level, through the subject matter of the poem, and the techniques used to portray this. Robert Frost utilises many techniques to convey his respect for nature, which consequently makes much of his poetry relevant to the everyday person. The poems “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ and “The mending wall” strongly illuminate Frost’s reverence to nature and deal with such matter that allows Frost to speak to ordinary people.

Robert Frost said many times throughout his life that all men share a common bond. In his poem “The Tuft of Flowers” he analyzes the potential of such a bond, in first person. Frost turns an everyday common job, into discovering a common bond with another laborer. The author uses a comparison between aloneness with a sense of understanding to demonstrate his theme of unity between two men. In another one of Frost’s poems “Birches” he imagines walking through the woods looking at all the trees, and seeing the top bending towards the ground. When he sees this he imagines they are bending from kids swinging on them, rather then what is really happening to them. It can be analyzed that Frost had a very definitive appreciation for nature, and a very broad imagination.

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” Robert Frost once said. As is made fairly obvious by this quote, Frost was an adroit thinker. It seems like he spent much of his life thinking about the little things. He often pondered the meaning and symbolism of things he found in nature. Many readers find Robert Frost’s poems to be straightforward, yet his work contains deeper layers of complexity beneath the surface. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “ The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.

The speaker furthermore conveys the idea that nature is a grandeur that should be recognized by including the element of imagery. The poet utilizes imagery as a technique to appeal to reader’s sense of sight . It is “the darkest evening of the year” (line 8) and a traveller and his horse stop “between the woods and frozen lake” (line 7). By writing with details such as these, readers are capable of effortlessly envisioning the peaceful scenery that lies before the speaker. The persona then draws on reader’s sense of sound. “The only other sound’s the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.” The illustration allows readers to not only see,