Preview

Robert Frost: Dealing with Death

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1039 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Robert Frost: Dealing with Death
Dawson Yates
Professor U
15, November 2012
Robert Frost Essay
Dealing with Death “To be subjective with what an artist has managed to make objective is to come on him presumptuously and render ungraceful what he in pain of his life had faith he had made graceful.” (Lowell 1). Robert Frost’s ability to connect nineteenth century renaissance poetry with American poetry makes him one of the best poets of our time. In his poem, Home Burial Frost shows the struggle of a married couple, Amy and her husband, the farmer, and how they cope differently after the death of their child. He addresses three figures of language that makes this poem memorable. Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. When he was ten, his father passed away and his family decided to move back to New England. Frost emphasized that a poem “never a put-up job…. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a loneliness. It is never a thought to begin with. It is at its best when it is a tantalizing vagueness.” (Lowell 1). His father’s absence, I believe that’s why Frost usually writes about a family without a child, or as in Home Burial the baby has passed away. Robert Frost was also the first poet to speak at a Presidential Inauguration in 1961 for President John. F Kennedy, when he recited The Gift Outright. After winning many awards, named as one of America’s best poets, and having a mountain named after him in Vermont, Robert Frost passed away in 1963. The first element of literature Robert Frost makes memorable is imagery. In lines 84 & 86-87, Amy states, “You could sit there with stains on your shoes” and “You had stood the spade up against the wall outside there in the entry, for I saw it.” (Frost 1). Amy realizes and over reacts because no matter what, just like a stain, the absence of her baby will always be there. As for the spade, leaning against the wall until something comes and gets rid of it, the burden of their child’s death will poise her



Cited: Frost, Robert. “Home Burial.” (1915): Lowell, Amy. “Robert Frost.” Poetry Foundation. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/robert-frost. (2012):

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost, who died in 1963 at the age of 88, is one of the most cherished American poets. Over the course of his long career he achieved a level of fame and popularity that few poets other have seen and his works continue to have an impact on readers today. He loved the New England countryside and lived there for many years. The New England countryside is his primary subject, there are many different things to be heard and seen and experienced in this region.…

    • 725 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost’s poem “Home Burial” relates a drama between an estranged man and his wife. He presents a dramatic poem in the form of a dialogue about a couple that argues, differs with their opinions, and separates at the end. The center of the argument is around the death of their child. The poem is rich in human feelings; it highlights the expression of grief, frustration and anger that the couple shares while trying to deal with the death of their child. The Analysis of the poem will emphasize on the dramatic situation and identify the different elements that formed it such as the form, the tone, the imagery, and the language.…

    • 822 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost is one of the most well-known American poets that has ever lived. According to the article “The Themes of Robert Frost”, “we know the labels [of Frost] which have been used: nature poet, New England Yankee, symbolist, humanist, skeptic, synecdochist, anti-Platonist, and many others” (Warren 1). The author of this article, Robert Penn Warren, notifies the readers that one cannot solely base their thoughts of Robert Frost’s work on his labels. He states, “(...) the important thing about a poet is never what kind of label he wears. It is what kind of poetry he writes” (Warren 1). In other words, trying to look beyond the labels of…

    • 728 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frost wrote the poem “Out, Out” because he believed that a poem “begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” The poem needed to be about something that mattered and needed to “move the reader to a new understanding.” “Out, Out” is about a young boy who ends up cutting off his hand and dies because of it. He wrote this poem to entertain and then to teach his readers that even though there is pain and suffering life has to and will go on.…

    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frost is an important writer due to the fact that he helped renew popular interest in American poetry by refusing to write with the academic modernist style used at the time, he chose to be different. Frost wrote about nature and rural life in a traditional yet complex way that grabbed the interest of many people. Some of his best works that I particularly like include “The Road Not Taken”, “Home Burial”, and “Fire and Ice”. These poems Frost wrote helped form the conception of Americans as tough, self-sufficient individuals. “Home Burial” was about the overwhelming grief after the death of a child. Frost knew and experienced this first hand due to the loss of quite a few people. “Fire and Ice” considers the apocalyptic end of the world.…

    • 203 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Like so many artists, Frost drew from his personal experiences as inspiration for his poetry. Frost is described by biographers as having “links between the events of Frost’s own life – a gothic chronicle of disasters – and the poetry”. (McQuade et al., 1999, p. 1901) Frost lost his father at a very early age. He was only 11 year old at the time of his father’s death. “But it was not only the early death of his father that convinced Frost of the evil in existence. His own first child died in infancy; his only son committed suicide; one daughter died after childbirth, and another was mentally ill; his embittered wife refused on her deathbed to admit him to her room”. (McQuade et al., 1999, p. 1901) Frost experienced a great deal of loss throughout his life and that loss is reflected in his work. That loss, however, is not always easily uncovered. Frost often masked the pain in his writings with symbolism and metaphors.…

    • 1293 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Eulogy -Robert Frost

    • 1760 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Though his work is predominantly associated with the life and scenery of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained unfalteringly detached from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes he is essentially a modern poet who spoke truthfully in all that encompasses, his work inspired…

    • 1760 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Frost Compare and Contrast

    • 1316 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Robert Frost was an amazing poet with poems that ring out with “autumnal tones of New England” (Charters, 862). Robert was born in San Francisco in 1874 but did not truly begin his life until 1912 when he and his family moved to England and he was able to pursue his writings. Frost has many amazing works of poetry and like most poets, he has many poems that went unnoticed. The Road Not Taken and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening both embody the classic Frost ambiance; they are both full of metaphors and symbols that make the poems jump off the page with life. They are exquisite poems that will be carried on for generations.…

    • 1316 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California where his father worked as a newspaper editor. This may have been where Robert was first exposed to the aspect of writing. Robert’s first published poem was in a school newspaper at the age of 16 where he wrote a poem on the subject of Cortez in Mexico. Although he attended Dartmouth for seven weeks and spent two years at Harvard, he never finished a college education with a degree. After he had gotten married, he worked as a schoolteacher, and during this period is when he spent time writing the majority of his poetry. After his teaching career, he moved to England to pursue getting his works published since his poetry was not accepted for publishing in America. His first two books of poems, A Boy’s Will and North of Boston, were published in England and then later in America due to the overwhelming popularity of them in England (Greenberg ix-x).…

    • 1771 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Home Burial

    • 1053 Words
    • 5 Pages

    1. Is the husband insensitive and indifferent to his wife’s grief? Has Frost invited us to sympathize with one character more than with the other?…

    • 1053 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost is known as one of the most famous poets of the early 20th century for many different reasons all the way from his unique writing style and also how he rose to fame and out of poverty in such a little amount of time. He’s risen to such fame that a lot of times his poems are read to and studied by children and young adults all around the world. Some of his unique writing styles involve his detailed poems of nature such as “The Road Not Taken,” “Fire and Ice,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” and many others. Frost was able to rise to fame in a very short amount of time, although there were still some critics who thought that his works were that of something a normal person could write. Robert Frost through his complicated yet simple style of writing poetry has affected American literature in such a way that many people recognize him, alongside others, as one of the greatest American poets of his time due to his description of nature and modern events in…

    • 1192 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in California and moved to New Hampshire when he was eleven years old, after his father died. In his poems about familiar objects and characters of New England give his readers a sense of being there no matter where it was read. Frost’s transcendentalist view of nature and the descriptions of the way nature made him feel pulls the reader in and makes them feel like he is a part of the story. In a number of Robert Frost’s poetry he uses animals and insects to help articulate his thoughts and feelings to his readers.…

    • 549 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Robert Frost's Out, Out

    • 1619 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Robert Frost's poem Out, Out, effectively uses multiple literary devices to create coherence and a deeper meaning. This poem is an example of Frost's work that illustrates rural life and colloquial speech, which he was famous for writing. The poem is set on a farm and focuses on a young boy completing his chores, only to be distracted by his sister which leads to is death. Robert Frost's Out, Out, illustrates the commonality of death through the uses of rural imagery, personification, and a somber tone and detached speaker which are simple recurrent devices in literature. By analyzing Frost's use of common literary devices and form in his poem Out, Out, one recognizes the hardships associated with farm living,…

    • 1619 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost Home Burial

    • 1115 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Robert Frost's "Home Burial" is a tragic poem which presents an engrossing, intensely empathetic scenario as it deals with the lack of communication between husband and wife on the loss of their first child which is slowly leading to a breakdown of their marriage as they are incapable of sharing their grief. Written in colloquial language and including a variety of emotions from isolation to anger to bitterness, the poem is intensely analyzed narrative that enables the reader to realize the complexities of human nature…

    • 1115 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Ambiguous Road

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Robert Frost was a brilliant American poet. According to the biography list on the poet.org website, Frost lived from 1874 until 1963 (2013). While he is a world renowned poet, one of his greatest works was “The Road Not Taken.” Frost had a way with words that managed to touch the very soul of his readers. While there are many different methods that critics use to analyze literature, the easiest approach for a Frost poem is the reader-response approach because of the way that Frost uses ambiguity, symbolism and persona to reach his readers.…

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics