Home Burial : summary

In the descriptive poem Home Burial, Robert Frost (1874-1963) describes a tense conversation between a rural husband and wife whose child has recently died. Here, the wife’s name is Amy. At the poem’s beginning, Amy stands at the top of a staircase, looking out the window at her child’s grave. And she started lamenting. Her husband buried their child with his own hands.

Her husband does not understand what Amy sees and why she is so distressed. The death of the son was taken naturally by her husband. Her husband did not mourn the death of the son. According to Amy, she never saw her husband cry or express grief over the death of her child.

Amy gets fed up with her husband’s behaviour and tries to leave the house. Her husband begs her to stay and shares his grief with her. Her husband does not understand why Amy is expressing her grief differently; why is she angry at him? Amy scolds him, convinced of her husband’s indifference to their dead child. Her husband meekly accepts her anger, but a rift remains in their relationship. Amy leaves the house as her husband angrily drags her away.