Introduction of the Poem:
The poem “Home Burial” was first published in Robert Frost's collection of poems, North of Boston, in 1923. The poem is a great drama in which we find the characters in supreme crisis. The over - wrought mother of the poem is superbly drawn. The burden of grief over the death of her firstborn son is well drawn by Frost. She is not able to forget that her husband digs the grave for their first born son, and himself buries him there. She considers this as supremely callous and brutal. This alienates her from her husband.
Summary of the Poem:
Lines 1 to 17:
This poem is a story about a couple who have lost their only child, a son. The child is buried on the premises of their house. Amy, the mother of the child is a highly emotional person, and she takes the bereavement very much to her heart and is therefore mentally disturbed. The father on the contrary is a man of normal sensibilities and behaves as an average man. This emotional difference between the husband and the wife occasions the tale told here.
The husband stood on the bottom step of the stair and saw his wife before she saw him. It was because she was mentally engrossed in grief and was in the earliest process of climbing down. She turned her head over her shoulder and looked at some object of fear. As such she first took a step forward but then retraced it immediately. She did so in order to look at the object again from the top height of the stair. The husband moved towards her and asked her what it was at which she was all the time looking. He insisted on an answer. Hearing this from him she turned and bent down to the level of her waist. And her face, which formerly showed fear now became dull (obtuse). The husband climbed up the steps and went as high as to have her under his arm. While climbing the steps he repeated his question to fill in the interregnum. Once again, when he was beside her he emphatically said that he was determined to know the reason of her this behaviour and sternly asked her to tell him what it was. On her part, though she stiffened her neck only the minimum, she was resolute and was not going to give him a clue to find out the object. She believed that he was an insensitive man; therefore despite his all attempts he would not be able to discover it. No doubt, for some time he could not discover it, but after some time he uttered the ejaculation ‘Oh’ and repeated it to signify that he had discovered it.
Lines 18 to 31:
The wife was stunned at this repeated of ‘oh’ cry of the husband and asked him what it was that he had found out. In reply the husband did not name the object but only said that it was that he saw. In a challenging manner the wife said that he did not and cannot know the object. And then she asked him to name it.
In reply the husband, as though he had not heard the challenge of his wife, went on to say that it was very strange that he did not see it on the instant, and also said that all this time he had failed to take notice of it from the spot where he was standing at that time. He further said that it was certainly because he had become used to it, and then added that that was the reason why he failed to mark the object before. He then described the object as the little grave - yard where the dead of his family were buried. The grave - yard was so small in size that the whole of it could be seem found within the frame of the window. He added that it was not much greater than a bed - room and asked her if it was. The grave yard had three stones of slate and one of marble. There was a small - sized but broad at shoulders state stones on which sun - light was falling. Then he declared that the stones were not fit for our attention and note. The object of his wife's attention and note was the mound or heap of earth under which their child was buried.
Lines 32 to 47:
Amy, the wife vehemently cried, as if prohibiting him from uttering the words ‘Child's mound’. And then she started sliding down the stairs, shrinking and removing herself from beneath his arm, which rested on the banister (upright column supporting the hand - rail) as though he were something untouchable. At that very moment she cast a threatening look at him. For some time the husband was dumb founded and simply twice uttered the words was a man not entitled to speak of his son when he had lost.
In reply Amy said that he had no such title and then angrily enquired after her hat in a huff. She was so much agitated that the very next moment she declared that she did not need it and was prepared to go out bare - headed. She cried as though she were in suffocation and wanted to go out for air. In reply to her husband's question she said that she was not sure if any man (implying - who was so insensitive) had a right to speak of his dead child. The husband entered to the wife not to go out to someone to seek consolation; and requested her to listen to him. He declared that he would not descend and sat down where he was with his chin rested between his fists. In the end he told his wife that there was something he wanted to know from her.
The wife arrogantly replied that he did not know how to ask for it. Yet the husband beseeched her to help him in doing so.
She gave no reply and only moved the latch, showing thereby that she abhorred him.
Lines 48 to 69:
The husband in reply to this gesture of Amy said that his speech almost always offends her, and he does not know how to speak so as to please her. He then very submissively said that he was prepared to be taught how to talk politely and pleasantly. But then he submitted that he did not know how it was possible. Then he put forth his view that while dealing with women a man should give up part of his manliness (crudity or virility). After this he offered to reach an agreement under which he would not interfere in anything which was private to her. However he expressed his view that between a husband and a wife, who love each other there should not be any secrets. Making his statement more explicit he said that he did not like secrets to live between a loving husband and a loving wife. But then where there is no love between them they cannot live without them (secrets).
At this the wife moved the latch a little more showing thereby that she refused to agree with her husband.
Seeing this, the husband cried impatiently and appealed to her wife not to go out and not to carry their quarrel but of home to strangers. He requested her to speak to him of her sorrow or misery provided of course if it is not superhuman. He further requested her to let him share her grief. Then, with a slight bitterness in his voice he pointed out that he was not different from other man folks, as her standing there away from him suggested. He requested her to give him an opportunity to understand her and her sorrow. He, however, opened that her show of grief was a little exaggerated. In the end he asked her why she regarded the sorrow at the death of her child so very inconsolable when she enjoyed the love of her husband. Lastly he asked her if the child would get any satisfaction from her show of grief.
Lines 70 to 94:
The latter remarks of the husband annoyed the wife and she accused him of deriding her. In reply the husband denied the accusation vehemently and said that she was angering him and he was coming down to her. He cried with regretful surprise that their relation had so much worsened that now he could not even speak of his dead child to her.
The wife further accused the husband that he lacked decency of speech. She further said that he was devoid of fatherly feelings as was evident from the fact that he himself had dug the grave of their child. Then she went on narrating the scene of his grave - digging in minute details. She had watched him digging the grave from the window, and seen how the sand and small stone pieces hit by his spade first left into the air and then came down to the earth and finally rolled down by the side of the mound. At that time he looked so unlike her husband that for some time she could not recognize him as that. She was in a state of great excitement and climbed the stairs up and down, up and down . But all that time he was busy digging the grave non - chalantly. Afterwards he came into the house and went into the kitchen where he was sitting with his shoes on soiled with fresh earth, from his own son's grave. Not only that he even talked of the routine affairs of life as if nothing serious had happened. He had left the spade leaning against the wall.
The husband was greatly exasperated by these intensely emotional outpourings of his wife. At first he said that her accusations were such as to compel him to laugh. He further said that he felt as if she had cursed him and even if she had not be felt like a cursed one.
Lines 95 to 111:
The wife was very tense. She went on to say that she could repeat the very words he had uttered to that time. And then she said that he had said that the best possible man - made fence of birch got rotten after an exposure to only three foggy mornings and one rainy-day. The implication was that the deepest grief was washed out with the passage of time. This sort of utterance had no literal relevance in a room where there was no birch fence. As such in a way he was slighting her grief. And then once again she accused him of being frigid to the calamity of their son's death. The way of the world is that one's closest friends go with him with the funeral procession as indifferently as if they did not go at all. A dying man from the time of his sickness to death is all alone and his loneliness increases at the time of his actual death. It is true that his friends go with a dead man to his grave but they do as a show of formality and even before he is buried, they begin to think of their worldly concerns and the living people. Thus, according to the wife the world is wicked and evil, and she would like grief not to remain so momentary. At least she would not like her grief to be so transitory.
Lines 112 to 120:
The husband was pleased that his wife was, now very much better and relieved by unburdening her mind through this long speech. He, therefore, confidently says that she will now not go out. He pointed out that she was crying, therefore she should shut the door so that the neighbours may not hear her cries. He also said that climax of her sorrow has already been reached. With this he cautioned her that some stranger on the road was coming towards their house.
But the wife showed her resentment at this cut and dried speech of her husband and once again repeated her resolution, though tamely, to go out. She also said that she was unable to make him understand her grief and its volume.
The wife was opening the door wider and wider. At this the husband took a jocularly firm stand and asked her to let him know where she was going so that he may bring her back by force.
Critical Appreciation of the Poem:
Introduction:
Though Frost has written only two dramatic monologues of the order to Browning's best dramatic monologues like "Andrea Del Sarto," “My Last Duchess,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,” (“A servant to servants” and “The Pauper Witch of Grafton” in Two Witches), a number of his other poems, “The Death of the Hired Man,” “Home Burial,” “The Fear,” “Snow,” etc., too achieve a fine degree of drama. In “Home Burial,” Frost presents a crisis situation wherein one of the protagonists has grown as desperate as to be mad. She does not listen to the reasoning of her husband, and so persistently scolds him for what she considers his lack of involvement in the crisis wrought on her by the death of their son, that it ultimately leads to the rupture of their domestic life.
Intensely Dramatic Poem:
This is one of Frost's poems which have attached a large critical attention. It has variously been described as “most moving,” “intensely dramatic.” Reginald Cook has said in The New Dimensions that in “Home Burial,” “There is the drama of social adjustment in human relationship.” In “Home Burial,” says Louis Untermeyer, “the strange and the familiar are strikingly blended. The talk is the talk of everyday, the accents of a man and wife facing some sort of crisis. But the situation is strange—common in words, uncommon in experience.” Frost himself thought well of the poem.
I also think well of those four don'ts in Home Burial. They would be good in prose and they gain something from the way they are placed in the verse. Then there is the threatening “If - you - do!” (The opening line of the last stanza of the poem). It is that particular kind of imagination that I cultivate rather than the kind that merely sees things, the hearing imagination rather than the seeing imagination though I should not want to be without the latter.
Issues of Personal Grief and Husband-Wife Relationship:
The action of “Home Burial” moves round the situation of infant death - the reactions of the parents to what is basically a mutual loss. But Frost brings in larger issues into the forefront, the personal “grief” fading into the background, issues such as husband - wife relationship or that between man and women, or life and death.
A man must partly give up being a man
With women-folk. We could have some arrangement
By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off
Anything special you’re a-mind to name.
Though I don’t like such things ’twixt those that love.
Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.
Or
No, from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.
Friends make pretense of following to the grave,
But before one is in it, their minds are turned
And making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.
But the world’s evil. I won’t have grief so
If I can change it.
Conflict between wife and Husband:
In the initial stages the focus of attention is on the ‘conflict’ between wife and husband. The wife believes that her husband does not love their child sufficiently to give the dead body a decent burial and mourn fittingly on the death. The man says,
I’m not so much
Unlike other folks as your standing there
Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
I do think, though, you overdo it a little.
God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,
A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.’
The centre of interest in the poem is born of this conflict. The characters are revealed in a moment of supreme crisis, and their states of mind presented with precision and without any explanatory detail. The conflict continues into the close of the poem, the ending serving as a notice that no basis “on which the husband and wife can continue to exist in mutual concord” has been found, and that no basis will be found.
Style and Language:
The most remarkable thing in this poem is the accent and the dash—the distinguishing features of the speaking voice. The language of the speakers is suggestive of their tension born of the conflict. The broken syntax serves well to externalize the emotional upsurge in the characters’ mind:
‘You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—
Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you—’
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