Robert Frost’s ‘Home Burial is a symbolic curt conversation between a husband and wife to capture the themes of mortality, marriage, love, and grief. Amy, the wife, is frustrated and dialogues with her husband who seems unmoved by their son’s recent death. Frost uses paradox to uncover the strain in their marriage caused by unclear communication where Amy wants to speak about the death but hurls resentful words while the husband seems to understand her grief but maintains outward indifference and dominance. Through the use of critical principles from ‘The Poet’, Emerson would have been intrigued by Robert Frost’s ‘Home Burial’ because the narrative capsulated Frost’s obscurity, imagination, and ambiguity through the use of contradictory metaphors and imitated direct speech to stimulate the readers to seek deeper meaning without regarding empiricism.
Home Burial
In ‘The Poet’, Emerson defines a poet as an artist that uses distinct methods of structuring his poem around a series of sketches and imagery so as develop suggestive outcomes to the reader. Emerson would praise Frosts writing in ‘Home Burial’ because the poem explores human psychology by using imagery in exploring the shortcomings of human beings in communication. The poem is essentially about two people that love each other deeply but cannot express their true feelings towards each other which leads to deep loathing that is triggered by a tragic event, the death of a child. The wife attempts to leave but the husband is adamant in letting her go and she accuses him of not listening to her while at the same time refusing to speak.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Emerson also outlines the importance of self-reliance in a poet as one that faces the danger of being misunderstood through contradiction. Frost’s complies with this principle in the ‘Home Burial’ where the poem starts with portraying the husband as an overbearing man that is oblivious of the wife’s grief. However, the reader’s later discover that the husband is concerned and knows what the wife is undergoing but the problem is communication where each party knows what to say but they suppress it within themselves. Throughout the poem, the couple exchange mean responses that shows deep agitation for the lack of a clear network between them while at same time showing body movement that shows affection.
In ‘The Poet’ Emerson rejected the static knowledge by which poems are written so that a poet has the liberty to alter facts and distort previously established notions. Therefore, ‘Home Burial’ presents the readjustment of knowledge contestably as it reveals new information that disproves the reader’s stand at the beginning. In particular, the overwhelming submissive nature of the wife that shows fear in her eyes when asked by the husband about what she is staring at. For example the use of the line’ mounting until she cowered under him’ to show masculine imposition that overshadows the wife to describe the husband at first but later he begs the wife to come back.
Emerson also argued that poets accomplish the duty of connecting nature to the audience through symbolism. Frost captures this well is the ‘Home Burial’ because he captures the essence of life and death as centralizing human kind as a mortal component of nature. Drawing from his personal experience, Frost depicts mutual distrust, secretiveness, intimidation, and alienation as the leading factors that cause couple estrangement. When the husband asks the wife to share what she saw, she thinks to herself ‘Sure that he wouldn’t see/Blind creature.’ to symbolize the typical incapacity of the communication level between them. Other words such as ‘You don’t know how to ask it (line 43) and later ‘You make me angry’ (line 71) reveals the distinct nature of women and men. Most of the time, men hear but they do not actually listen.
Emerson would also be impressed with ‘Home Burial’s’ exploration of self-reliance where the poet is able to separate the experience from themselves and analyze it as part of an omniscient being that knows all dimensions of the narrative in the poem. In this regard, Frost places himself as an observer that sees this couple fighting over what is commonly solvable. However, both parties are aware of their misgivings in fueling the already drastic situation but choose not to act upon their natural instinct. The use of the self-reliant Emerson poetic principle places Frost as a great poet. .
Through the use of paradox in the characters words, Frost applies the Emmerson’s poetic principle of non-stativity in writing. He uses paradoxes in the way the wife engages her husband so that they cannot reach an amicable solution. Such contradictions help the poetic narrative to transition from one meaning to another thereby creating an experience. Readers are left to imagine what it would be like to be in a situation where the facts contradict themselves. Many couples hold their true thoughts and feelings to themselves to the point where they cannot take it anymore and leave. At the end, the husband tries to gesture to the wife that she should come back showing that he still loves her and she still loves him, but they are limited by their inability of expression.
In the end, Frost uses Emerson’s critical principles to paint a larger formal representation of reality. As an essential guideline, the ‘Home Burial’ can be used to reference continuous introspection into individualism which is a typical characteristic of rural New England poets. Frosts choice of words in Home Burial uses realistic speeches while at the same time reducing the static meanings attached to these words. He ultimately uses metaphors that convey themes such as death and family, love, and marriage. The line ‘So the small window frames the whole of it’ (line 25) means that the wife feels trapped inside a house and the window symbolizes the freedom by which they can go out through meaning getting out of marriage.
The use of metaphors probes the reader to interpret the meanings differently therefore aligning with Emerson’s critical principles. Readers are encouraged to have different viewpoints as the poet intended. Direct and similar interpretation of the words is as a failure to the poet who misdirected his creativity in provoking thought into his work. Frosts also goes against the ideational principle and uses metaphors to unify the different lines of the poem. It is noteworthy that Frosts used metaphors and symbols which are basic characteristic that enables readers to identify Emerson like poetic works. The reader may read too deeply or too shallow into the meaning.
Additionally the direct depiction of words as powerful rather than their hidden meanings in ‘Home Burial’ exhibit Emerson’s principles in the poem. Frosts main objective as a poet is to explore language limitations by using sounds and metaphors so that the audience cannot reach a common conclusion. Frost uses strong words that stand as strongly illuminating their literal sense and invoking thought. Dynamic meanings are captured through the use of tropes that create larger formal structures of the context in the poem.
Conclusion
Emerson would praise Frost’s work in ‘Home Burial’ for remarkably describing the desperation emanating from the couple who are symbolically trapped inside the house while the wife stares at their family graveyard where they recently buried a child. The underlying animosities within them can only be expressed through bodily movement and household placement rather than by actual words. Frost creates a suffocation aura where the ’home’ which is usually a shared place of comfort becomes a habituated threat to family and marriage thereby meeting the characteristics of a great poet by Emerson’s standards.
Works Cited
Frost, Robert. “Home Burial.” Poetry Foundation.http://www.poetryfoundation.org Accessed 12 March 2019.
