There are only two certain things that every life shares. There is birth and there is death. After a birth, death is inevitable. However, the time it takes until death can be short or it cans be very long. Robert Frost’s poem “Home Burial” shows that death cans come soon after birth. Death of a newborn not only takes away the physical body, it also takes away love, trust, and alters the emotion of the grief stricken parents. Frost captures the differences between the man and his wife in dealing with grief brilliantly.

Woman likes to express their emotion. In Frost’s “Home Burial,” the wife, Amy, is very distraught, “Looking back over her shoulder at some fear,” “Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!” (lines 3 & 36). She is very emotional and expressing it freely “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t," she cried” and “You’re crying” (lines 30 & 109).

Grief makes Amy to lose her trust in her husband after witnessing how he digs their child’s grave. She sees him mechanically “Making the gravel leap and leap in air / Leap up…” (lines 75-76). She resents her husband’s indifferent about their child’s death. He sits with the “fresh earth” stains from his “baby’s grave” “And talk about…everyday concerns” (lines 84-86). She thinks he has no feeling because he talks about the amount of time for a birch to rot while “what was in the darkened parlor” (lines 95-96).

She also fears and hates her husband at the same time, “She turned and sank upon her skirts…/ And her face changed from terrified to dull” (lines 8-9). She refuses to let him read her by “stiffening of her neck and silence” (line 14). She is “sure that he wouldn’t see” because “Blind creature…didn’t see” (lines 15-16).

On the other hand, man is grieving privately which makes his wife misunderstands him.  He “talk(s) about everyday concerns” with companies (line 86).  In private, he lets his wife knows that her behavior makes him feels that he “must partly give up being a man” (line 49).  He also expresses his frustration because she does not see he is grieving too.  He shows this in “Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?” and “You make me angry…/ God, what a woman…/ A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead” (lines 35 & 68-70).  

However, he loves his wife and tries his best to open the line of communication with her.  Despite of anger, hurts feeling, and afraid of losing his pride “Amy, There’s someone coming down the road!” he still shows his patient and his love (line 111).  Twice he lets her speak up about her feelings. He repeatedly begs her “Help me,” “I might be taught,” “Let me into your grief,” and “Give me my chance” (lines 43, 47, 59, & 61).  He also explains how he does not understand that her “mother-loss of a first child” feeling “So inconsolably – in the face of love” (lines 64-65).

He is also pleading for her trust. At first, he warns her, “I will find out now – you must tell me, dear” (line 12). After he knows her feeling, he pleads, “Amy, Don’t go to someone else this time” and again, “Don’t – don’t go / Don’t carry it to someone else this time” (lines 39 & 56-57). When she refuses to hear him time after time, he told her “I’ll follow and bring you back by force. I will –”with a determination but gentle voice (line 116).

Frost’s “Home Burial” shows that even though both parents are hurts by the loss of their child, man and woman express their grief differently. Woman likes to show their emotions outwardly such as crying, outburst of anger. Grief also makes her distrust and stops loving her husband. Man with pride, on other hand, tends to bury his sorrow inside and cans only talk in private, which makes his wife think he is blind about her feeling. However, her grief stricken mind makes her not seeing his love for her. He is willing to do anything to win her love again. His voice is very gentle when he talks to her such as, “There, you have said it all and you feel better/You won’t go” and “The heart’s gone out of it: why keep it up” (lines 108-110).

 More about Robert Frost.