paper 10 The American literature

*Theme of death in the poem “Home Burial”

      The poem home burial by robert frost deals with various them such as dramatic monologue between husband and wife, social adjustment in human relationship,anger of mother/wife to wards husband,barrier of hatred,A moment of spiritual crisis,failur of language to communicate,but the them of death has affected in all the themes of poem and death is the center in the poem.

     North of boston is frost`s ''book of people,''and there are many abnormal and oloenated people in it, One such is the ''over wrought'' mother in the home burial cracking up under a burden of grief over the death of her first born,It is the shadow of her dead child which brings her in conflict with her husband and aliants them.it is a dramatic dialogues in which the action is devloped through the dialoge between husband and wife.The couple is cought in a moment of spiriual,and the suppression of theire emotion has all the intensity of a lyric.

      The over-wrought,excited mother cannot forgate that her husband himself dug the game of their ownchild in their little grave yard and himself buried him there.She regards it as an indication of the callousness of her husband and has brought her to the very point of mental breackdown.He is a simple man and is baffled by the obsessiveness of her sorrow.

        ''I do think ,though you over do

        it a little,What was it brought

        You up to think it the thing

        To take your mother-loss of a

        First child so''

            He think that his love for her should be sufficient to console her.''But there is not one point of contact remaining between them, for him life gose on in spite ge herief,for her grief over with the sense of life;for him,grife can be submerged beneath the every day existence of life,for her this is impossible'' She hates husband because he had been unfeeling enough to dig his own baby`s grave to intrude upon her grief with talk of aomman thing.

        ''What and how long it takes a birch

         to not to do with what was in

        darkened parlour you coud`nt care.''

        Death of a child highly influenced over mother more than to the father,Forest has shown the theme of death from the perspective of mother and perspective of father and human when women become wife she is more wife than the daughter.Whom she become a mother,she is more mother than wife,as here the death of a child,put her in a situation to leave her husband.

      As john f.lunen has such views:the real drama and core of the poem lies in the psychological change in the attitude of the emotionally excited wifw,and effect of death on her emotions .''She is made to talk,to express her grief in words,and such self -expression soothes and consoles,and result in the attainment of new perception by expressing her feeling in words.She come to understand them''.She imagines that must give over her life to her sorrow for the child 1s death.The offect of death of child as,she refuses accept her husband`s love ,because he seems to have accepted this death with callous indifference.She cannot understand how he should have came buride the child himself.She is horrified that he should have come into the kitchen with his boots muddy from the earth of the grave .and left the shoved in the entry way.In the days since then she was cut herself off from him,erecting a barrier of hatred between them,because of the influence of death of child on mother ''now,as her husband,force her to talk of these things,she at last come to see that her grief and resentment resualt from the pain of discovering that human nature is limited and cannot sacrifice everything to sorrow.When she finally asserts,half hystrically,that she will not compromise her grife by returning to normal life,one senses that she herself sees the absurdity of her attitude.Her husband`s kind ,yet fire,reasonableness indicates that throgh.she still suffers from the excess of grife,the crisis is now past and she will evetally be led back to life''.

       The death of child turned in to sadness of a couple as,

       

           ''what was it broughat you uo to

            think it the thing to take

            your mother -loss of a first

             Child so inconsolably in

             the face of love.''(66-68)

          The Husband assumes that his wife`s been brought up to see inconsolable grief after the loss of a child to be trendy.''the thing to do.''Dose that seen like a fair assessment to you?

         Here are some lines from the poem,Which reveals the death and its grife of both husmand and wife and perspetive of both to look towards death.

  

         ''The littal graveyard where my

          people are!so small the

          window frames the whole of it

          Not so much larger than a

           bedroom,is it? (line no-24-26)

         The husband has grown up with this graveyard nearly so death,for him,is a fact of life that`s always presant .it`s also kind of weird that he would compare the graveyard,Where people are buried when their lives over,to the bedroome ,Where many lives get their first beginning,but it`s all part of the circle of life for this guy.

          ''[    ] it is not the stones,

           but the child`s mound--'' (30-31)

           Here the man shows that he sees what`s bothering the woman,though in a sense he dosan`t. He says that the gravestone are not a big deal,and that it`s the child `s grave that is really bothering her.we get the sense that she`s bathered mostly by the child`s mound .but that she`s still unnerved by the stones and the fact that death is so close to her day in day out.

        ''cant`t a man speack of his own

         child he`s lost?      (37)

           one of the biggest problems in this poem is that ,no, this couple can not speck to eachother about death.Again and again ,they miss the mark in undersatnding the other`s emotiona and reactions.Here how the word ''lost'' here is used as a euphemism.The husband may have a graveyard on his properly,but he still won`t talk about death plainly.

              ''what had how long it takes

               a brich to rat

               To do with what was in the

               darkned parlor.''       (99-100)

  

       That time,it`s the woman using euphemis to talk about death.The thing in the darkeened parlor.we can guess is her dead child`s body.

             ''No,from the time when one is

              sick to death,one is alone,

              and he dies more alone.''

       The woman`s view of death is a lonaly one indeed.Listen to te sounds in these lines-we can hear the long mournful  ''o'' sound declaring her daression and sadness.She has jumped from discussing her son`s morality here to talking about death in genral,with some mopey assonance to boot.

            ''Friends make pretense of following

             to the grave,but before one is

             in it,their minds are turned.

             And making the best of their

             mind are turned and making

             the best of their the best of their

             way back to life.''

      The woman continues talking about how lonly dying is,as if she were the who were dead not her son.But perhaps she makes a good point -she is feel that her son died alone,that she is goinng to die alone and that her husbond can`t even come close to supporting her in grief.

       Here the example how the theme of death reflected in the work of two different writers of american literature.The example of death in ''Home burial'' & '' A cask of amontillado.''  The short story is an important genre in american litrature for a variety of reason,including but not limited to the rise of middle class and expansion westward the short story exploded in popularity in the early stage of american history.One of the preeminent author of this mode was Edger Allan pae.His tales are often gothik,macabre short stories,so it is not surprise that ''a man cask of amontillado''deals with death in some capacity.Robert frost was an american part from the early 20th century.He is often associated with rural life and pastralthems.These two auther are inextricable linked to certain locale [Poe to baltimore and frost to new england] and time period.Although nearly a hundred years and over hundred miles separate them,their works still share common threads.In the case of frost`s poem.''home burial'',and poe`s short story.''A cask of amontillado'',the death plays an essentialrole in each piece of literature. although the theme of death is dealt with differently in each piece,''home burial''and ''A cask of amonyillado'' rely heavily on mis communication between character to explare the theme of death.

       Death itself,in each story coudn`t be used any differntly.In a literal sense,the death of a couple`s child and subsequent burial begins the action of ''Home Burial''.While in ''A cask of Amontillado''.The death of Fortunato and premature burial are the death of fortunato and premature burial are the resolution to the story,so,''A cask ofamentillado'',concerns it self mainly with the theme of revenge and ''Home burial''concrens .it self with the theme of mourning,in the scope of the overall arching theme of death.This essntially paints,death in two different light; death being seen as a tragedy in one case and triumph in another.There isn`t much commnality withen the thema between the two in that aspect,

     Two poems of frostmeditate on diminished life,of an aged worker in''the death of the hired man'' and a child in ''Home burial.''also consider the division between husbsnd and wife in the ways they sympathize with other and console them in their grief.

      ''Home Burial'' treat a subject more pitiful than the death of an old hired man;It describes obliqurely the death of child who is buried within view of parsent house,and throgh the paradoxical language frost has described the them of death.as in ''the death of the hired man.'' is the effect thisevent has on surounding lives.We are introduced to the character as the husband attempt to gain some understanding of his wife by physicallypositioning himself so thst he to can look at the view that preoccupies her.This is a briliant moment in frost,in which the literal and thesymbolic seem so completly interchangeable that neither faithful realisam nor profound meaning is scarified.The husband perceives,''The little graveyard where[his] people are;'' (24).His ownership of the graveyard indicates.Some possession of grief,Though his wife,amy,feels betrayed of his composure and seeming callousness.She blams him for digging the grave,for ''making the grave leap and leap in air.''as though the energy mainfested in the digging is an expression of a light rather than heavy heart.amy`s anger is projected irrationally on to her husband for lack of any other outlet for her righteous emotions.She can not come to terms with the continuation of human affairs after herown world is destroyed.She later reveals this as s genral observation rether than simply one of her husband`srespons to the ragedy.Here in these lines we can seen the use of paradoxes of roboert frost in the poem''Home Burial''

             ''The nearest friend can go

              With anyone to death,comes

              Sofar short.They might

              as well not try to go at

              All no,from the time when

              one sick to death,one is

              alone,and he dies more

              alone,friend make pretense

              of follwing 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.”

      The anonymous husband works first gently and uttimetly with violence to repair the chasm that alienates them from eachother.We can trace the progression.He asks amy to unburdan herself to him rather than another person -this ''Someone else'' who is likely also the ''someone coming down the road''.later in the poem. threatening to invade the marrige and revealing the extant am will go to consol herself.The husband shows movement of real comassion and eloquence.

            ''Let me in to year grief

             what was it brought you up to think it the thing

             to take your mother-loss of a frist child

             so incosolably-in the face of love.''

                                              (62,66,68)

         But Amy`s most direct accuactin are about his speech.She believes he is sneering,and that he dosent,''know how to speck''.His remarks about the rotting birch wood momentusly symbolize for her his apathy about their child`s death.Finally as he encourages her to consider her own angry words as a catharsis,she become irate;you oh,''you think the talk is all.''What is frost accomplishing hear?He prove the barest strokes.The nearest image of the tregedy we have of the tregedy is themention of ''child`s mound.'' and amy`s reference to ''the darkened parlor.''This understatement works for the reader.Who need only to understand the emotonal climate in order to reconstrust imaginatively the scene of death.The minical suggestive contrasts with the deluge of words that moves.