Home Burial By Robert Frost

'Abode Burying' opens with Amy, a adult female whose son has recently died, most to come down the stairs from her room. Her husband sees her from 'The lesser of the stairs', but she does not encounter him considering she is lost in her own thoughts. Here's an analysis of the poem by Robert Frost.

Home Burial by Robert Frost

Home BuryingAnalysis

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs

(…)

And her face changed from terrified to dull.

Amy is looking at something in fear. She takes a footstep downward hesitatingly, but then retraces if to come up back to the height and look at the object. The husband advances towards her and asks what it is that she keeps always looking at from in that location. He insists on knowing about it, Amy turns and bends on her knees. Her face, which looked terrified till at present, becomes irksome-looking. You can too read the verse form in full hither.

He said to proceeds time: 'What is it you see,'

(…)

'You don't,' she challenged. 'Tell me what it is.'

The husband asks her again as to what it is that she looks at. He mounts the stairs just in a higher place her, and asks her to tell him about the object, because he volition anyhow discover it out. Amy remains silent, and does not assist him past telling him. She lets him look and find for himself, thinking that he would not exist able to see or find what it was that she has kept looking at. Thinking him to be blind to her feelings and troubles, she is sure that he cannot discover anything. For a moment, the hubby cannot run into anything. But then he murmurs 'Oh' as if to indicate that he has institute information technology out. Amy asks what it is, the husband says that at present we can see it. Amy remarks to him that he cannot find out what is at that place she looks at, and challenges him to tell her, if he knows, what he has constitute out.

'The wonder is I didn't see at once.

(…)

'Don't, don't, don't, don't,' she cried.

The married man says to Amy that it is a surprising thing that he could not guess before about what it was she looked at. Since he was accustomed to looking at the object and other things, he never noticed it specially. It was the small graveyard or burying plot where his people were buried. The graveyard is so minor that the whole of information technology can exist seen through the window. It is not larger than a bedroom. At that place are three stones of slate and one of marble, 'Wide-shouldered' little slabs there in the sunlight/on the side-hill. Even so, they demand not pay attention to these. Information technology is not these grave-stones, remarks the married man, but the 'child's mound' or the heap of stones and earth meant to be the grave of the child that she keeps looking at. At this Amy cries to him not to talk about or mention the child's grave.

She withdrew shrinking from beneath his arm

(…)

I don't know rightly whether whatever human being can.'

Amy slips from beneath the artillery of her husband that are resting on the railings and starts going downstairs. She turns to him and casts a fearful glance at him. He asks her twice whether a man is not entitled to speak nearly his own dead child. Amy replies that at to the lowest degree he has no such correct. Then she asks about her hat and tells her husband that she was to go out of that place and then as to get air in the open. She too remarks that she does not definitely know whether any insensitive man has the correct to talk most this matter.

Amy! Don't go to someone else this fourth dimension.

(…)

Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

The husband asks Amy not to go to anyone else, but to listen to him. Saying that he will non come downwards the stairs, he sits there putting his chin between his fists. He tells her that he wants to ask her something. Amy replies that he does not know how to ask it. The husband asks her to help him do it. Instead of responding to his request, Amy moves to the door and moves the latch every bit if to go out.

'My words are nearly always an criminal offense.

(…)

Merely 2 that exercise tin can't live together with them.'

The married man remarks to Amy that his words seem to offend her and that he does not know how to speak in a style or use the words in such a fashion as to please her. But he can, he says, learn how to practise so. He cannot say that he understands all the things just now. Sometimes a man must stop to acquit like a human with a woman in a hardy manly fashion and be sensitive enough to appreciate her feelings. He further suggests that they, the husband and the married woman, should have an system under which the hubby should not try to know annihilation that the wife doesn't want to tell him about. Those who love each other do not need have any such secrets between them; but those who do not love, cannot live together without having some secrets between them and something to hide from each other.

She moved the latch a little. 'Don't—don't go.

(…)

You lot'd recollect his memory might be satisfied—'

Amy moves the latch a little to open up the door. Her hubby entreats her not to go to tell or consult somebody else about her trouble. He asks her to tell him about it and allow him share it. He explains to her that he is not different from other people; but if she keeps herself aloof from him, he will be proved to be then. He requests her to give him a chance to evidence the sincerity of his grief over the kid's death, although she may be feeling it more than than he. He asks her what it is that has made her take the loss of her kid 'and then inconsolably', in spite of the honey he bears for her which may compensate for the loss and make her satisfied.

'There you get sneering now!'

(…)

A man tin can't speak of his ain kid that'due south expressionless.'

Amy misinterprets her husband'south consolatory words and comments that he is mocking her. The married man assures her that he is not doing and so. He tells them that he is annoyed with her annotate and that he will come down to her to prevent her from going out. Commenting on her bluntness and stubbornness, he remarks what kind of a adult female she is that she does not even let him to talk about his own dead child.

'You can't because y'all don't know how to speak.

(…)

Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.'

Amy replies that he cannot speak about his own dead child because he does not know how to speak to limited his grief. If he had whatever feelings for the child, how could he, she asks, dig its grave with his ain hands. She tells that she herself saw him excavation pieces of stones, making them leap in the air and fall downwardly to class to do. She tells him that she asked herself who this man was who was digging the grave, was-he seemed such a strange or an aberrant man to her. She came downstairs over again to look at him once more, lifting his spade for digging the grave. And then, she tells him, he comes to the kitchen. Amy heard his voice and she came there to see him with her own optics. There he was sitting, with his shoes stained and soiled by 'the fresh earth' from his own 'baby'southward grave.' He was talking about daily routine matters as if nix of import had happened. She saw that he had put his spade outside against the wall in the entrance.

'I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed.

I'grand cursed. God, if I don't believe I'one thousand cursed.'

Listening to his wife'due south brutally accusing words, the husband feels like laughing the worst laughter. He remarks that he actually believes that he cursed past his married woman. If he does not believe him to exist cursed, that will brand him feel cursed.

'I tin can repeat the very words you were saying:

(…)

If I can change it. Oh, I won't, I won't!'

Amy tells her husband that she can echo the words spoken by him at that fourth dimension to console her. He had said and so that 'three foggy mornings and one rainy 24-hour interval' can damage or rot the best and strongest birch fence that a human may have ready. That is, even the greatest grief can be forgotten with the passage of fourth dimension. Amy says that she is surprised to encounter how a human being could talk virtually the damage to birch fences particularly in a room where there are no such fences. In fact, it is meant that he did not care for the expiry of his child. Disgusted over the way of the world and the behavior of her married man, Amy remarks that fifty-fifty the closest friends do not mourn a man'due south death long and deeply enough.

Their sorrow over death is so short-lived that they might as well not feel it at all. From the fourth dimension a man falls ill and is confined to bed, he remains lone, and when he dies he is all the more than lone. Friends follow him to the grave only for bear witness or social decorum, and earlier he is cached in information technology, their minds turn away from the dead and they begin thinking almost their worldly affairs and almost living people effectually them, or about the things they understand or are concerned within life. All grief is thus short-lived. Amy regards such behavior of the world equally evil. She says that if it lies in her power, she will not allow grief to be so short-lived.

'There, y'all have said information technology all and yous feel ameliorate.

(…)

I'll follow and bring you dorsum by force. I will!—'

Having listened to Amy'due south statement, her husband remarks that since she has expressed her views, she must feel better and that she should non go out now. He asks her to close the door because he does not desire somebody who is coming down the route to see her in that condition. Merely Amy is not satisfied with the mere talk or words of her married man since she has been disgusted by his behavior. She says she must leave somewhere, and she opens the door to do so. The husband asks her where she intends to go. He tells her to understand that if she goes out, he will follow her ring to bring her back even forcibly. The poem ends hither.