Robert Frost Home Burial Essay

In the poem “Home Burial”, Robert Frost takes the roll of the husband and lets his wife, Elinor, take the roll of Amy. At the beginning of the poem, Amy walks down the stairs while glancing back and undoing the step she took. She would then proceed to raise herself and look at what she looking at before she undid her step. She was looking out to the family cemetery and at the grave of their passed child. From the bottom of the steps her husband was watching her and was wondering what she was seeing from where she was standing. He asked her “What is it you see/ From up there always? – for I want to know” (6-7). When Amy recognized that her husband was watching she sat down on the stairs and her face expression changed. She doesn’t want to tell him what she is looking at because she believes that he does not feel the same than her about the loss of their child.

It seems that with asking that question again he was trying to gain time and give her the chance to answer his question. When he reached her, he told her that he will find out now what she is looking at and that she has to tell him. He looks out of the window and is silent for a while. Meanwhile she was thinking that he is blind and that he would never see what she sees. But all of a sudden he says that he sees what she sees. She seems to be shocked and asks him what he sees. He tells her that she sees the family graveyard and talks about it. Then when he was about to talk about the grave of their child she interrupts him and cried “Don’t, don’t, don’t,/ don’t” (31-32). After that she runs down the stairs and turns around at the bottom to look at him. When he asks “Can’t a man speak of his own child he lost” (35), she simply answers him that he cannot speak of his child’s