In class, we read Robert Frost’s poem “Home Burial.” Write about your impressions of what “Home Burial” says to you. Also, consider the possible ways in which this poem might be “ethical” or can be analyzed in terms of its ethical content. Some angles to consider:
- Think about the relationship between the characters. What does the poem reveal about each of them?
- Does the poem cause you to take sides with one of the characters, or to see the situation from his or her perspective? If so, how?
HS
Fiction and Ethics 
The couple in the poem has lost their child and are facing and dealing with the loss in different ways. The man seems to be empathic since he tries to understand her sorrow (“let me into your grief”), sometimes even to the point of pressuring her (..”you must tell me dear”). He does practical things such as digging a grave for their child, maybe to ease his sorrow, which doesn’t make sense to a woman who sees their sorrow as somehow sacred, and accuses her husband of not acting accordingly (“You could…talk about your everyday concerns”). She doesn’t try to understand her husband’s way of dealing with the sorrow, rather she acts theatrically and keeps avoiding him both physically and emotionally, and condemns some of the ways he speaks of the dead child (“Don’t, don’t, don’t..”). He expresses his frustration for her behavior (“Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?”), yet doesn’t want to give up, even though the tragedy has caused them also marriage problems (“I might be taught I should suppose”). Though being practical and trying to accommodate, he expresses his deepest feelings with words instead of letting his emotions take over. The poem causes me to take the man’s side, because he shows quite exemplary behavior by showing empathy towards someone who processes things differently than himself. Yet he doesn’t underestimate his own ways of thinking and acting. In ethical terms, the poem deals e.g. with a person’s responsibility of his/her own feelings and actions. Even in the middle of an enormous crisis, shouldn’t one act in a way that doesn’t add up to other people’s misery but rather lessens it if possible?
Let me just begin by stating that poems are very challenging for me, I don’t particularly enjoy reading them (and thus have not practiced) so I probably miss some of the “hidden meanings” behind the text 🙂 Anyway, here goes….
What first came to my mind, was how people grieve differently, and react differently to tragic events. Feelings can’t and shouldn’t be compared, but people still do, like in this poem. Or rather the woman did, blaming the man for being insensitive and lacking emotion, she herself mourning appropriately.
I then started thinking about the differences between a mother and a father, especially regarding a (newborn?) baby. Mothers tend to have a deeper emotional connection early on since they’ve already carried the child for 9 months, whereas fathers get to know their child at birth. Thus, to an outsider (thinking rationally since no personal emotions are involved) the different reactions seem plausible, expected even (if generalizing). It made me think, though, whose feelings matter? Or whose matter more? How can they even compare? Or does it matter how they are shown. The problem is, that actions and feelings do not correlate. What I mean is that the same feelings are not behind all same actions, since people react differently to the same emotions.
I can understand the woman’s perspective and why she thinks like she does, but I cannot really relate to it, nor to the mans. Rather, I feel that both need to be heard, but are belittled or ignored by their partner, not being able to see past their own sorrow, or maybe not even wanting to.
In the poem, the relationship between the man and the woman is strained. They have lost their child and are grieving, each in their own way. At first the poem seems to side with the woman, because her grief is represented as more profound and consuming. But it seems to me that the man’s grief is different. He tries to cope with the loss by concentrating on the everyday things and chores, which in turn offends her. So, the parents have different responses and coping mechanisms to losing their child. They are so wrapped up in their own personal loss, they have trouble communicating to each other and share the grief.
The poem made me consider how differently people react to loss and grief. They may not act rationally or justly towards the people around them and they can blame each other. The poem presents both points of view, which gives the reader an option to side with either one or to sympathise with both. I found it hard to make a definite decision.
“Home Burial” is a poem about grief, and how it is experienced differently between two people. The poem depicts a rural couple who have lost a child and, in the aftermath, the man and woman display their grief differently. The woman is outwardly vocal in her grief and is reluctant to move past it. The man, however, finds it difficult to express his own grief, and instead immerses himself in physical labour (burying the child). Both equally fail to understand the other’s grief process and as a result, their marriage starts deteriorate.
Examining the relationship between the characters, it is easy to recognise the breakdown in communication. The woman is having trouble coming to terms with the death, while the man seems to be more pragmatic about it. Although the man is unable to verbally express his own grief, he openly requests that his wife include him in hers. However, the woman is wholly unreceptive due to her misinterpretation of her husband’s behaviour. She takes his lack of emotional expression for indifference, and therefore feels isolated in her own suffering.
Upon the first reading I was inclined to side with the wife. However, during the second reading I began to think about gender roles in regard to how men and women deal with grief, and began to understand that the man’s behaviour — although initially seemingly flippant — is, in fact, as dictated by his grief as his wife’s. I can fully understand how this poem can raise ethical questions, and how it can be interpreted differently depending on the reader’s own perspective.
The characters in Home Burial are a couple who have lost a child and are dealing with it in different ways, ways that the other person finds hard to understand and therefore hard to accept. The wife seems to think that because the husband is a man, he cannot have a correct response to losing a child since it is a much more impactful loss for a mother than a father. She is accusing him of taking the death of their child too lightly, complaining to him about how his behavior is not like a grieving father’s should be. I think the message in the poem is that people have different ways of dealing with emotions and should not be forced to react in a specific way. I think the wife is being unfair when she does not accept the man’s way of grieving and when she undermines the impact that a loss of a child can have on a father.
Reading the poem, I find myself siding with the man who is more understanding of the other person’s way of dealing with grief and who wants to talk things through in order to understand each other better.
The man and woman’s interaction in the poem indicates that they have been distant with each other for a while now. The woman harbors some resentment for her husband for his lacking response in the death of their child. The man tries to understand her, frustrated that his efforts always fail and desperate to find some way of connecting with her. The issue seems to be that they are responding to their loss in different ways. The mother is stuck in her grief and rejecting her husband for (in her perception) not sharing her feelings. The father has been holding his emotions inside while struggling with the distance between the pair.
I think that the way the man seems to force a confrontation and attempts to prevent her from leaving the house initially made me side with the woman. I also believe that because I am a woman myself, I automatically identify more with her, and view the poem from her perspective. This influenced my emotions and opinions about the characters. It was only after a second, more careful reading that I could place myself in his shoes, and even then some of his responses were strange to me. I suppose these perceptions have to do with the ethics of reading.
Another avenue would be to analyze the ethics of the acts committed by the characters (ethics of the told). For one, I’m not sure if a home burial was common or allowed in this context, or if there is something dark in the background. There is also the question of the ethics of writing. Has Frost been in this kind of situation himself? Is the poem based on the experiences of others? Does he have the “right” to write about this topic? For what purpose did he choose this topic?
While reading the poem “Home Burial,” I couldn’t help but think about the anecdotal evidence I have gathered, either from studies, books (fiction or nonfiction) or personal interactions, that shows what happens to couples who lose a child. They experience the ultimate test, one that makes or breaks them. They either become much closer, bound in their sorrow, or they grow to resent each other, unable to understand the other through the fog of their own grief.
So I found that in reading the poem, already assuming from the title that a death was involved, I could clearly see that the relationship was seriously strained, going down the path of hatred and resentment rather than compassion and understanding. The husband came across as somewhat antagonistic, channeling his feelings of pain and helplessness into anger directed at his wife before appealing to her for help. She seems to hold back at first, choosing silence and seething resentment, before lashing out at him, also in anger.
I can see the situation from both perspectives, in part because I have witnessed the profound pain of parents who lose a child and because I know that everyone copes with grief differently. It is hard to say who is right here, or who is ‘at fault.’ I think neither are right or at fault, but it does call into question how couples can or should work through such a devastating experience together and what responsibilities they have toward each other in such stressful circumstances.
To me, Home Burial is about two people who grieve in very different ways and therefore don’t understand the other’s way of coping with such great loss. It is difficult to take any sides in this, although the male figure does appear more sympathetic in the beginning when trying to get his wife to share her burden. We see some of the wife’s perspective too towards the end, which made me sympathetic to her as well; this is what causes me to think that neither character is inherently “in the wrong” so to say, they are simply struggling under a heavy emotional burden which has naturally made their relationship strained.
As for the ethical side, I figure that there some value judgements that readers could make based on the text. What comes to mind is whether it is wrong for the wife to accuse her husband of being too insensitive, or inversely, whether the husband is in the wrong for implying that the wife is taking the loss too hard. In any case, these are ethical stances that readers might make depending on their view of the world or personal experiences.
What immediately strikes me about the poem is the power dynamic and point of view set up in the first two lines: “He saw her […] Before she saw him”. The man is established as the active party, the one who sees, which invites the reader to see with him, from his point of view. This does soon change, though, when the man asks the woman what she sees outside. Overall, we get both their perspectives, which are at odds with one another, but to me it felt like the set-up of the first lines directed me to see the poem more from the man’s point of view. However, looking at the argument that they are having, this does not mean I necessarily agreed with him.
It is clear that the characters deal with loss and grief in very different ways, and neither can understand the other. Neither way is inherently wrong – the problem is that they cannot adequately communicate their feelings to each other. I find the last lines of the poem as interesting as the first, as they add another layer to their dynamic. Throughout the poem, they are both trying to control the other and how they should feel, but it is only in the last line that the man threatens her with violence. This is one aspect of the poem that certainly could be analyzed from an ethical standpoint: rather than comforting each other, they both try to dictate how the other is allowed to feel, until they end up exerting their ultimate means of control, which for the woman is leaving, and for the man the threat of violence.
To me this poem is very sad. It shows two people who are together but still very alone in their grief. I notice myself thinking of those times when you wish you could be “a fly on the wall” so you could hear conversations people have with each other in privacy, and yet this poem shows how uncomfortable it would be to witness such an intimate conversation. It is as if you are eavesdropping to something you are not supposed to hear.
I can imagine this to be a very typical conversation in many relationships where two people have the same experience and most likely the same feelings, still they act in very different ways. Because of the different reactions, they have a hard time understanding each other or identify each other’s feelings as the same, like in this poem the feeling of grief. It almost makes you frustrated to witness such a miscommunication and misunderstanding between two people, who care for each other.
I can see that it would be easy to take sides and many readers probably do. At first, I felt deep empathy towards the mother in the poem and could relate to her feelings. When I read the poem again, I could also understand the father and his different way of dealing with his grief. I would like to think that this poem makes you do just that – to think of both sides, to see an intimate conversation from both point of views and to feel empathy for both.
The poem explores the grief that parents have over the loss of their child. The characters in the poem are a man and a woman, presumably husband and wife, who have different ways of grieving. Neither of them understands the way that the other grieves, and this has become a strain on their relationship. The man attempts to open a dialog, but the woman is distant and initially tries to hide that she is grieving. She does not wish to speak about the loss with the man, because she believes that he does not share her emotions. The man tries to reason with her, but without success, which frustrates him.
Both characters display a lack of empathy toward one another. The woman acts emotionally, while the man tries to act reasonably and without emotion, until he starts to get angry. The woman does not understand that the man is grieving without expressing it outwardly, while the man fails to acknowledge the depth of the woman’s feelings. Although the man appears to try to understand the woman, he also suggests that she is overreacting. This lack of emotional understanding on the man’s part makes the woman withdraw from him. From an ethical viewpoint, the poem challenges the reader to think whether there is a right and a wrong way to grieve, and is it justified to believe that the other person should grieve in a different way. The poem did not cause me to side with either character over the other – they are both right to grieve in their own way, but neither of them approve of each other in order to grieve together.
Grief is a prevalent theme in the poem. The characters are a couple, who are talking about a child who has died – their child. They have very different ways of grieving the loss and cannot properly understand the other’s grief. The woman does not let the man into her grief, and what the man sees of her grief, he does not understand. He goes as far as saying “you overdo it a little”, since what he witnesses of her grief is only the never-ending despair.
The man’s grief is the opposite; if the woman “overdoes” hers, the man’s grief is invisible. The woman does not understand how the man could have dug the child’s grave so calmly and talked about mundane things right after. The woman feels as if she is “grieving more” and that the man’s quiet way of grieving is not enough.
There are no wrong or right ways for grieving, but in the poem, it is a battle of the minds. In addition, there are mentions of the woman going to somewhere else to find support, to find someone else to lean on, and the man expresses how he wishes the woman would lean on to him instead of someone else. He seems to feel that the woman does not trust him to let him into her grief.
A child’s death usually affects the parents in one of two ways – either it brings them together or drives them apart. In this case it seems to be the latter.
Robert Frost’s poem “Home Burial” powerfully depicts the grief and disbelief that parents can experience in the tragic event of losing a child. It seems to be difficult for the woman to hear the man talk about their child, and he tries, in his way, to ask for her help in understanding her grief. But she only perceives him as not being sufficiently sensitive towards her or about the tragedy. She can’t understand how he can continue with daily tasks after what they have gone through. She accuses him of not caring. Yet he cannot understand her, perhaps because he is shielding himself from his own grief, or maybe because he simply can’t fathom her profoundly emotional response, either because of his character or societal influences.
In addition to the understandable sadness, there seem to be other emotions, such as anger, that pull the woman and the man further away from each other. They appear even to resent the other’s response to the tragic event, and both have a hard time understanding the other’s way of coping with their loss. They are dealing with what has happened in different ways and can’t find a way to communicate to mend the distance between them. It seems they are both lost within themselves and will remain so until they can better empathize with each other.
In “Home Burial”, we follow the discussion between two people, husband and wife, who are trying desperately to understand each other after the death of their child. It seems that the wife is more open about her grief, saying her husband cannot talk about their dead son because he does not know how. It also shows in the husband’s behaviour, asking his wife to help him understand after not realizing what has upset his wife so, only to understand that she is looking at the window the gravesite of their child.
The problem between the couple is not that either one of them is acting maliciously or unempathetically. It is that the each have a different way of dealing with the loss of their child, one of the worst things imaginable to happen to a person. While it seems the husband thinks the best way is to push the grief aside and move on, the wife acknowledges the pain. It affects her worldview, recognizing the cruelty of the world and how lonely everyone is in their death. Even when her husband claims that speaking out her pain will mean that she will now feel better, she gets exasperated, since he thinks that just talking would be enough to take away her pain. He still does not get it. As a reader we can epathise with both of the characters. At first glance it may be easier to feel for the husband, since being brought in the middle of the conversation we too don’t right away understand what the wife is talking about. As we learn about the situation, it is easy to feel for the wife, since she speaks more openly about what she’s feeling. I think ultimately, taking sides is affected how the reader themself feels about dealing with grief: the ones thinking it’s better to just move on might empathise with the husband, while the ones believing in expressing emotions side with the wife.
It seems Amy and his husband grief in different ways. Amy is depressed and has shut down and does not want to talk with her husband. She feels fear and that her husband doesn’t grief at all and feels it is impossible to talk with him. Amy says no man can understand a loss of a child and I have to disagree with that. On the other hand, she also saw her husband to bury their dead baby in their backyard, which is shocking and ethically wrong, so I have all my sympathy for Amy.
It is possible though that it was the husband’s way to process the loss, but it is still not the right thing to do in terms of morality and ethics. Maybe in some cultures or at some time a home burial has been accepted? I have no idea, but today and even when the poem was written in 1914, it sounds brutal. In my opinion the poem was really depressing to analyse.
The poem displays two different ways of grieving over a lost one. The couple has recently lost a child and neither the man nor the woman understands what the other one is feeling. However, the loss of a child is not the only tragedy that is happening, but their marriage also seems to be falling apart as the death of a child has brought up this lack of communication between the two.
The dialogue shows a certain kind of power dynamic between the two, which can be connected to ethics. The line “A man must partly give up being a man with women-folk”, can even be seen as something rather sexist because it might imply that the type of grief the woman is experiencing is not “manly” or suitable for a man. However, the woman is also not allowing the man to understand her as the man is asking her to let him into her grief and not trying to understand him either. The man does seem to belittle his wife and her experiences and does get irritated. Marital issues and how they are portrayed in art can be a very ethical issue, especially the implied domestic violence that might be happening especially at the very end.
“Home Burial” seems to contain a tragic frustration born from things unsaid and feelings unexpressed, and perhaps from things wrongly said. The characters grieve in a way that doesn’t connect them; the woman doesn’t tell what she sees but when her husband realizes what she’s been looking at, she “challenges” him to explain. As the view of the graveyard opens and he mentions “the child’s mound,” the wife shuts herself. The husband appears to be indifferent to the tragedy of which the little graveyard view (should) remind them (as he “didn’t see at once”); however, after he tries to develop his thoughts and gets interrupted, he asks plainly why can’t he talk about the lost child.
The woman because of her frustration is more heartbroken, and while the man attempts to take part in her grief, he wonders why she’s so “inconsolable.” When she recounts the day of the burial, she also does the man’s demeanor which seemed awfully apathetic. Is she right that he doesn’t care and wouldn’t know how to talk about the tragedy? But then again, she doesn’t give the man a chance to talk but seems to shut him off, always running off somewhere else. I though the woman’s reaction is reasonable since she had carried the child and he was their firstborn, while the man tries to be supportive in a way that’s seems almost heartfelt but sounds dismissive of her way of grieving. Yet, it’s hard to say if either behavior is right; the man after all wants her to talk and the woman shuts him off. It’s not fair to dismiss her way of mourning, but it’s also not fair to shut him off because he does appear to love her. This made me wonder whether the woman loves him anymore; it wouldn’t be fair to both to go on if she didn’t.
After reading this poem multiple times, it is possible to understand either one of the characters’ sides. At first reading, it seems like the man is selfish and apathetic. The female voice judges him for carrying on living life normally, “talk[ing] about [his] everyday concerns”, after burying his own child. However, reading the poem the second time, I began to see the man’s side. It becomes clear that the woman, Amy, is struggling to talk about her feelings to him, creating tension between the characters. In the poem, he is begging her not to “go to someone else” about her feelings. He clearly wants to talk, suggesting that he really cares about her feelings and therefore their relationship as well. Also, the poem does not explain why the man had to bury the child, and why Amy did not stop him. It leaves the reader wondering that if she let him do it, why is she so mad at him? The reader never learns the man’s name, once again suggesting that the poem is told from her side, leaving his point of view out of the story. Therefore, I would argue that this poem should be considered as “ethical”. On a literal level, it contains the ethical question of wanting to know the reason for burying a child. Moreover, it entails the underlying question of what the correct way to deal with grief is. Should one spend the rest of their lives regretting it and wallowing in sorrow, like Amy does? Or should one move on, talk about their feelings, and try to live life to the fullest, whilst coping with the loss?
The poem offers two sides to dealing with loss. The man wants to move on and hopes that talking will help; the woman thinks he is taking the loss lightly and should be as devasted as she is. She is closed off and tries to avoid the subject, thinking that he is uncaring, working and talking easily while she was distraught.
I think I side with the woman at the beginning – she is portrayed as vulnerable and afraid while he is a little pushy and threatening (and at the end also with “by force”). Her attitude towards him shows she thinks he does not and cannot understand so she shuts herself off when she sees him. He seems uncaring when he finally (why did it take him any time if it’s “always”?) understands why she acts fearful, describing the view before working out what actually has her upset.
Later he becomes more understandable as he shows concern and that he wants to help her but just does not know how. He wants her to include him and discuss, pleading with her. The repeated ‘don’t’s from both especially caught my attention as emotive pleas. Although he does appear unsympathetic again when he thinks she’s overdoing her grieving.
So I think the poem deliberates different ways of dealing with loss and grief. Is there a “right” amount of mourning? What is too little, can there be too much so that it is just wallowing? They both have different ways and do not seem to understand the other’s way, though the man makes an effort to understand whereas the woman has decided to exclude him because she thinks he is unfeeling and sneers at her sorrow.
“There’s something I should like to ask you, dear” / “You don’t know how to ask it.” / “Help me, then.”
This excerpt from Robert Frost’s poem “Home Burial” (1914) can give us an inkling on what it all is about. To me, the poem is about communication, or rather, the failure to communicate. The two characters, husband and wife, are an old married couple who don’t know how to speak to each other. Both of them seem to take great offence to each other’s remarks, however, the man seems to get angrier and he takes it out on her, while the woman gets agitated and wants to flee the house for the entirety of the poem. So, we could say that there are gender dynamics at play here.
However, what I find most interesting here, are the misunderstandings caused by playing different ‘language games.’ An example of this can be found in the latter part of the poem. The wife recounts a past event where the man had just buried their child. She is baffled by how the man was able to talk of “everyday concerns” at a time like that, when his boots were still stained with “the fresh earth from [their] baby’s grave.” The woman repeats what the man had said then, right after the home burial: “Three foggy mornings and one rainy day/ Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.” To me, this is the greatest misunderstanding in the story of our poem. The man was perhaps unable to speak of the child’s death directly. Instead, he spoke metaphorically on how man’s greatest accomplishments, just as their child, can be swept away by death in mere days. This, however, was misunderstood as trivial small talk.
“Home Burial” deals with loss and the expression of grief. The couple has lost their child at a very young age, and the loss seems to be a taboo among them. It is evident that both are grieving, but their grieving processes are very different.
It seems that neither of them is grieving openly, and both avoid the topic. The woman seems cold and unempathetic towards her husband. It’s almost like she is blaming him for the death of the child. She is blaming him for not grieving “appropriately”: “You could sit there with the stains on your shoes, Of fresh earth from your own baby’s grave, And talk about your everyday concerns”. She doesn’t understand the lack of emotion her husband seems to display, as she herself expresses the emotions so deeply. Perhaps she lacks the understanding of how differently men and women are often taught to display emotions; women are encouraged and expected to show them, and men are expected to hide them.
Initially I felt like taking sides with the woman but as the poem progressed, I realized that taking anyone’s side is rather pointless, since it became apparent that both of the characters are grieving in their own, equally “appropriate” ways.
I get the impression that he is already looking for her and waiting for her to come downstairs. It seems like he’s been trying to get her to open up for a while now. She’s angry at him for handling the death of their child so lightly, in her eyes anyway. He accuses her of being too hard on him and not being willing to listen and to work things out.
There are a few points where the reader is led to take sides with one of them, but it alternates. Sometimes, she’s made to look rigid, unreasonable and perhaps even disloyal. Things are also revealed about him that make the reader suspect he might have done something to alienate her. Perhaps they even have a secret they’re keeping from the rest of the world together?
In “Home Burial”, a wife and a husband are discussing their dead child. It is a tragic subject and difficult to talk about, and as a reader, I find myself trying anxiously to take sides with both characters. At first, the man feels closer to me, easier to empathize with, because the poem starts from his perspective as he tries to talk about their child with his wife, but she is reluctant to open up. Once the wife starts speaking, however, I can understand her point of view as well. She is angry because she feels that her husband is not devastated enough, as he is able to function in daily tasks and talk about everyday matters.
In this way, the poem raises an ethical question of the “correct” way of mourning — is there such a thing? It can also be analyzed on the way it presents the wife and husband’s different points of view on the subject. I get the feeling that the man’s practical way of grieving is presented as the preferable way as he is able to control himself and he is even trying to help his wife. Whereas she is drowning in her sorrow and being unkind towards the person who is trying to help her. But can you blame her? Losing a child must be like your worst nightmare come true, I would not expect a person to be able to act properly in that situation.
To me, the message of this poem is that grief is an extremely isolating experience that often can’t be shared even with the closest people. The dark mood of the poem is set by its title which, I suppose, refers not only to the little graveyard by the house but also to the characters’ family and home, which were buried with their late child.
It is curious how this poem puts the relationship in perspective and makes it easy to sympathize with both characters. Neither Amy nor her husband is evil, but they seem so to each other simply because they are hurt. It is heartbreaking that they have a common loss, but they deal with it separately. It seems that Amy feels isolated and misunderstood while her husband feels lonely and confused. She appears too emotional to him and he appears too cold to her, to a degree that she seeks compassion in other people. I think, his numbness could be caused by gender norms which deny men their right to be emotional.
The poem starts with Amy looking out the window and one might think that she looks at her son’s grave. I thought so too but then I also felt like she could reminisce her husband digging the grave and feeling betrayed by his ability to do that and acting usual afterward – the behavior that he admitted being ashamed of. She couldn’t bear losing her child while he could bury him.
I think this poem is ethical in a way that it touches upon a complicated topic of grief and makes it clear that not only does death take away a loved one, but it also shatters relationships. The characters lost their child and each other as if their home was buried.
Robert Frost’s poem “Home Burial” was an interesting poem to read. Having read it once in class and a couple of times after that I feel like it became more and more interesting to read each time I read it. It wasn’t like the other works by Frost that I’ve read before. The poem tells the story of a man and a woman, who are dealing with the death of their child, and possibly the death of their relationship as a consequence. The woman in the poem is clearly very distraught by their loss, and due to her grief, has a hard time moving on and discussing her feelings with the man. The man’s grief is shown in a more physical way, since he’s described digging the child’s grave in their yard and not talking about his emotions.
Much like the woman in the poem, I initially thought the man’s behaviour was quite cold and dismissive. This is why I initially took her side, since I believe I would also personally grieve in a manner that is more similar to the woman than the man. But after reading the poem again, I began to think about the ethics regarding grief and death. Is it ethical or morally wrong to judge someone for grieving in the “wrong way” or dealing with death in a way that is not typical? In the poem, the narrator doesn’t pick a side either, instead narrating the feelings of both characters without favouring the other. I also thought of the character’s behaviour towards each other could also be analyzed in terms of its ethical content, since their grief makes them act in a different way.
In the poem a husband and a wife have a tense and emotionally charged discussion over a heavy subject matter, the loss of their child.
They both grieve their own way which upsets both of them, especially the wife because she’s highly emotional and can’t seem to be able to get over the loss, and feels almost as if the husband doesn’t care too much that the child is dead as he just keeps on living a normal life.
The husband seems to have accepted the fact that the child is gone and maybe his coping mechanism is to keep living a normal mundane life. He doesn’t get how his wife can grieve for so long and while he tries to be empathetic and understand, he comes across a little patronizing.
I don’t think the poem makes you choose sides, it shows that there is no right way of expressing deep sorrow but instead everyone has their own way of doing it, and I think the poem makes you symphatize with them both.
In general, i have a very difficult time with interpreting poems and this one turned out to be pretty hard. The poem was kind of hard to understand at first but what i did get out of it was that it was about grief and the different ways of dealing with grief. I believe it has something to do with the loss of a child in some way and both are trying to cope with the fact. In terms of empathy, i feel a bit more empathetic towards the man, because it seems to me that he is dealing with his grief in a way that i can relate to more.
This poem has a way of showing how differently men and women are taught to process grief and what a lack of communication can do. The wife is in touch with her emotions and knows how to grieve, whereas the husband tries to avoid his own feelings by talking about yard work right after burying his own child. The wife doesn’t understand that this is in fact, a coping mechanism and reads it as her husband not caring about their dead child. Nobody has ever taught the husband how to show his feelings, which makes him avoid them altogether. Both of these people are victims of their own circumstances. Neither of them understands how differently they grieve and thus, they don’t truly listen to each other. Anyone who has lost a loved one can find something familiar in this poem. The denial and the policing of “the right way” to grieve are still very common elements in family tragedies.
“Home Burial” is about the conflict between a couple after the death of their young child, and the man having buried the child in their yard, as well as different ways of dealing with grief. We see these ways through both perspectives throughout the poem, with the viewpoint changing between the two characters especially during the longer monologues from both the man and the woman. In addition, the poem shows moments from the perspective of one of the two characters through it’s description of space, most especially when the man on the stairs or the woman looking through the window look down at their spouse.
The conflict stems from the fact that the woman wants nothing more than to run from the reality of their dead child, and forget, while the man wants to return to a so-called normal as soon as possible, even as soon as immediately after burying their child. Still, he also wants to be able to process the death immediately and openly, the opposite of what his wife wants, leading to her trying to physically leave the house to get away from him.
The poem raises plenty of ethical implications in how the man deals with the dead child’s grave, and his seeming lack of sorrow about it, as compared to the woman, who cannot bear to even think about it, crying out as soon as the man even brings attention to it. On the other hand, the woman is also preventing the man from dealing with the grief in his own way, through refusing to talk about it. Especially looking at the poem through the lens of what are the permissible ways for us humans to deal with grief might be a worthwhile angle for study.