Home Burial

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Home Burial

Robert Frost’s “Home Burial” is a very well written poem about a husband’s and a wife’s loss. Their first born child has died recently. Amy and her husband deal with their loss in two very different ways, which cause problems. Amy seems like she confines their child to the grave. She never seems to le go of the fact she has lost her first child. Amy’s husband buried their child himself. This allowed him to let go and live a normal life. Amy does not understand how he could do what he did. Therefore, she wants to have nothing to do with him, especially talk to him. He doesn’t understand why she can’t let go, and why she won’t talk to him. He tries to get her to tell him why, but she just wants to go to someone else. She will not talk to him or let him talk to her because he always speaks offensively. This lack of communication was there before the death, which I think will be the downfall of their marriage. Frost’s use of imagery and tone allow the reader to see and feel what Amy and her husband are going through.

Frost uses a lot of imagery in “Home Burial” to give the reader a look at what is going on. The first line, “He saw her from the bottom of the stairs / Before she saw him,” lets the reader know Amy is at the top of the stairs, and her husband is at the bottom. He uses imagery to show many things such as facial expressions, movement from one place to another, and to describe a scene. He shows expressions in line eight “And her face changed from terrified to dull,” line forty-three “He sat and fixed his chin between his fists,” and line one-hundred and thirteen “…You’re crying.” By “seeing” these expressions, the reader can almost feel what is going on in Amy’s and her husband’s head. Line eight lets ...

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...ad at Amy for being so negative toward him. The fact that he buried their child with his own two hands, and goes on each day like nothing ever happened makes Amy very mad. He also stays mad at

her for always going to someone else to talk to. This anger goes back and forth throughout the whole poem. The negative tone lets the reader almost feel what Amy and her husband are going through.

In Conclusion, imagery and tone work together to give the reader a sense of feeling what Amy and her husband are going through. Robert Frost wrote this poem shortly after his own son died, which could have been the central purpose of the poem. I believe one of the main themes of the poem is that communication is a very important thing in a relationship. Amy’s and her husband’s relationship might have been all right if they had just been able to communicate with each other.

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