, Research Paper
In order to understand “Home Burial,” one must look into how the husband and wife each deal with the loss of their child. The husband is the type of person who talks about his pains and wants to talk to his wife. The wife, however, does not want to talk to her husband; she wants to talk to someone else. Frost did an excellent job capturing two different types of grieving and uses them to produce an excellent poem. The question the reader must himself is: Who is right?
first of all, how did the husband deal with his pain? He makes a statement in the text, “‘Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?’” this statement shows that his way of grieving is to talk about his problems with a person to help him deal with the pain. He is the one who had to dig the grave for his own child. According to his wife, this apparently caused him no grief because as soon as he was done he came in and said, “‘Three foggy mornings and one rainy day/Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.’” His wife thinks this statement means he does not care, but this is just another way he deals with grief. When he isn’t talking about it, he floods his mind with random and senseless thoughts so his thoughts would not be on his lost child.
On the other hand, the wife, whose name is Amy, deals with loss in a different way. When confronted by her husband to talk of her lost child, she says, “‘I must get out of here, I must get air.’” This statement shows that she does not want to talk to her husband about the pain she is feeling. But where does she go to grieve? The text does not say exactly, but the reader may speculate that she would go to her family and friends of the same gender. “‘Amy, don’t go to someone else this time.’” Her husband does not want her to leave again. this shows that she has left in the past. She also believes that her husband does not understand how to grieve the loss of their child. In a statement made to her husband to her husband about his talking about the child, Amy says, “‘You can’t because you don’t know how to speak.’” this shows that the people she went to talk to understand her more than she thinks her husband could.
In order to conclude this argument, one must understand that it is impossible to answer the question posed in the opening paragraph. There are many ways to grieve the loss of a child. The only thing one must realize is that people have ther own way to deal with pain. Sometimes the way may not seem to be the correct way, as in the case of “Home Burial” when the husband does not like the way the wife grieves and the wife does not like the way the husband grieves. In the end, they are unable to come up with the neccessary compromise and finally, the wife leaves. This statement shows that, “‘I’ll follow and bring you back by force. I will!’” It was unfortunate that neither could understand that they are both dealing with the pain and are both also hurt deaply for the loss of the child. Ultimately, the husband and wife are each right in their ways of dealing with the loss of the child, but neither is right at all in dealing with the other.