Robert Frost - Home Burial

Robert Frost – ‘Home Burial’

            I enjoyed reading the poem ‘Home Burial’ by Robert Frost as well.  I believe that this poem is one of his most clearly saddest poems.  The poem has at least two tragedies in it which are the death of a child at the beginning of the poem and the collapse of a marriage is predicted in the poem.  This poem is mainly about heartache and mourning, but most of all it seems to be about the failure and limits of communication.  The husband and wife in the poem are grieving in two very different ways.  The wife’s grief fills every part of her and doesn’t decrease with time.  The loss of a child would be unbearable for any mother so I can see grief setting in and controlling her life.  The way that she views the world in understandable, in the poem she says that most people make only claim of following a loved one to the grave, when in truth their minds are “making the best of their way back to life / And living people, and things they understand.”  She will not accept this kind of grief nor will she turn from the grave back to the world of living because if she does so then she would have accepted the death of her child.  She says that “the world’s evil.”  The husband in the poem has accepted the death and moved on.  He did grieve for the death of his child but the indications of his grief were very different from those of his wife.  He had to dig his own child’s grave which was very physical work not to mention the mental strain that would have on someone.  This action further links the father with a “way of the world” mentality.  The cycles that make up the farmer’s life and the organic view of life and death shows that this is how it is supposed to be.  The father didn’t leave the task of the burial for someone else to do, he physically dug into the earth and planted his child’s body in the soil.  The two of them had a breakdown of communication because they never talked with each other about the death and burial of their child.  There was a failure of empathy and communication on both sides.  We all grieve in different ways and being compassionate about that with others can help them to feel better and in expressing their feelings.  In writing this poem Frost knew firsthand about losing a child.    His firstborn son, Elliott, died of cholera at the age of three. Later, his infant daughter died. Two more of his children died fairly young, one by suicide.  This is a sad poem not only because of the death of a child but a marriage is torn apart because of the lack of communication with each other.