FROST

The poem “Home Burial” by Robert Frost chronicles an episode in what appears to be an ongoing struggle between two people to cross a void of misunderstanding. At this point in their relationship the man can only threaten to follow and bring the woman back with force. It is a poem of pain, of loss, of being along. The poem shows two people who have fallen far away from each other. In the void that is their relationship they are alone. The poem leaves one with the question that Vladimir asks Pozzo near the end of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting For Godot, “What do you do when you fall far from help?” Pozzo answers, “We wait till we can get up. Then we go on.” The action in “Home Burial” is of a man trying to enter the solitude of his wife’s grief. There are several reasons why this grief is not shared with her husband. If tragedy, like the loss of a baby, happens to a couple grief must be shared; it must be communicated. The couple have fallen far from each other’s help and understanding. The unshared grief that has caused the failure of the relationship is caused by a breakdown in communication between each other and of compassion for each other. Real communication involves understanding. Without this communication the man and the woman are left

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an can only respond incredulously, “And its come to this,A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead,” (69-70). In this statement we see an attitude held by the man, albeit one that may be subconscious. The man is as alone in his possessions as his wife is alone in her grief. Possessions are described as his or hers “his own child”, the people buried in the graveyard are “my people” and what is inconsolable for her is her “mother-loss of a first child”. What is hers is hers and what is his is his. They share nothing. The women then tells the man he can’t speak because she doesn’t think he has any feelings. She can not understand how he could bury his own son. As she watched him from that window she no longer knew who he was. She can’t reconcile that fact that he had the heart to bury his son. Not only did the man bury his own son but he “‘...could sit there with stains on you shoesOf the fresh earth from you own baby’s graveAnd talk about your everyday concerns....I can repeat the words you were saying:Three foggy mornings and one rainy dayWill rot the best birch fence a man can build,’” (84-86, 91-93). The woman feels that the actions and talk of the man were untimely. What appears to the woman as one of his eve
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Approximate Word count = 1755
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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