Importance Of Discovery In Robert Frost's 'Home Burial'

The nature of discovery is highly impactful when one is confronted with multiple worlds; enabling a physical and spiritual connection to places, ideals and society, transforming one’s perception over-time. Australian poet Robert Gray‘s ‘The Meatworks’, confronts an individual’s beliefs to influence their standpoint on a desensitized society. ‘Journey, North Coast’ introduces the idea that re-awakened realities emancipate one’s connection of the natural world. and Director Daniel Sousa’s ‘Feral’ explores into how being taken into an unfamiliar reality leads to discovering one’s natural world. It is within these poems that uncover the highly impactful nature of discovery.

Can Discovery truly allows us to view life in a new and fresh way? Due to the complex and abstract nature of the concept of discovery, a true sense of discovery harbour's the ability to incite individuals in many differentiating ways as it can be provoked through their different past experiences. The concept of discovery has evidently evoked curiosity and inquisitiveness through the protagonists of both the indigenous play “Rainbows end” composed by Jane Harrison, and also through the novel “The fault in our stars” authored by John Green.

Death is something that at some point will come to each of us and has been explored in many forms of literature. “The Raven” and “Incident in a Rose Garden” are two poems that explore common beliefs and misconceptions about death. Though both poems differ in setting, tone, and mood there are surprising similarities in the literary tools they use and in the messages they attempt to convey. The setting and mood establish the tone and feel of a poem. In “The Raven” we are launched into a bleak and dreary winters night where a depressed narrator pines for his dead girlfriend.

The last line in the poem “and since they were not the ones dead, turned to their own affairs” lacks the emotions the reader would expect a person to feel after a death of a close family member. But instead, it carries a neutral tone which implies that death doesn’t even matter anymore because it happened too often that the value of life became really low, these people are too poor so in order to survive, they must move on so that their lives can continue. A horrible sensory image was presented in the poem when the “saw leaped out at the boy’s hand” and is continued throughout the poem when “the boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh…the hand was gone already…and that ended it”, this shows emphasis to the numbness the child felt. The poem continues with the same cold tone without any expression of emotion or feelings included except for pain, which emphasizes the lack of sympathy given. Not only did the death of this child placed no effect on anyone in the society but he was also immediately forgotten as he has left nothing special enough behind for people to remember him, so “since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs”. This proves that life still carries on the same way whether he is present or not, as he is insignificant and that his death

The process of discovery refers to the perception created upon experiencing the unfamiliar and redefining what is familiar. Discovery can be achieved through unexpected means or deliberate expeditionary, whether it be tangible or a fragment of our thoughts/imagination/emotions. Poems ‘The Tiger’ and ‘Young Girl At A Window’ by Rosemary Dobson and poem ‘Invictus’ by William Ernest Henley thoroughly explore this concept via their ideology of human nature and its effect on discovery.

The term ‘discovery’ can be explored and interpreted in many different ways, the meaning is created by an individual’s perception, opinion and experiences of discovery. In the book Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch and the film, Titanic by James Cameron explores the concept of discovery as an idea that discoveries can be challenging as they allow for the transformation of an individual’s perspective, and they allow for an individual to discover their true identity and the identity of others around them.

Discoveries are everywhere in everyday life and they can impact the way we see the world, either positively or negatively. Because of this, it can be noted that “Not all discoveries are welcomed”. We can explore this philosophy through the examination of various techniques found within both Robert Gray’s ‘Journey, North Coast’ and ‘The Meatworks’, as well Leo Matsuda’s animated short film, ‘Inner workings’. These three texts, although all having visual processes of discovery, offer juxtaposing perspectives on the acceptance (or lack of) towards discoveries.

The evolution of each individual is fertilised by their experiences of and response to discovery. The extent of discovery is determined by the willingness to embrace the process of discovery and the connections made with places and people. Discoveries may be planned, as was the journey undertaken by the participants of Ivan O’Mahoney’s documentary Go Back To Where You Came From (2008). Else, discoveries can be unplanned and evoked by curiosity, as was the experience of Fat Maz in Tim Winton’s short story Distant Lands (1987). Discoveries have the ability to be intensely meaningful and transformative of one’s perspective.

In the poems “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, by Emily Dickinson and “Home Burial”, by Robert Frost, literary elements are used throughout both poems to get the message the authors are trying to portray. One main important literary element that is used to entice the reader, is symbolism, because it helps the authors describe something without actual describing it. Symbolism is also used because it shows how significant an object is. Characterization is also an important literary technique because it, gives the reader an idea on how the character would act, work, and their values in life. Death is a topic that is used in both poems. Also, every character express their opinion about death differently.

Introduction: Conflicting perspectives are different points of view expressed and influenced by ones context and values. “Birthday Letters” by Ted Hughes is an anthology of poems challenging the accusation that he was responsible for his wife, Sylvia Plath’s death. The three poems The Minotaur, Your Paris, and Red are an insight into Hughes justification of the death of Plath using a very subjective and emotive poetic form. The poems possess many deliberate techniques such as extended metaphors, connotations, diction and juxtaposition to encourage the audience to accept his argument that he was not the one to blame for this world renown tragedy. The poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath also displays conflicting perspectives of the

Robert Frost is an iconic poet in American literature today, and is seen as one of the most well known, popular, or respected twentieth century American poets. In his lifetime, Frost received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, and the Congressional Gold Medal. However, Robert Frost’s life was not always full of fame and wealth; he had a very difficult life from the very beginning. At age 11, his father died of tuberculosis; fifteen years later, his mother died of cancer. Frost committed his younger sister to a mental hospital, and many years later, committed his own daughter to a mental hospital as well. Both Robert and his wife Elinor suffered from depression throughout their lives, but considering the premature deaths of three of their children and the suicide of another, both maintained sanity very well. (1)

“Home Burial,” by Robert Frost, demonstrates the distinct differences between man and woman sorrow over their child's death. Through the poem, we can see the ways that Amy gets offended by his lack of grief, and how he doesn't understand, and is frustrated by, her extreme sadness. The mix emotion through both the husband and the wife would almost change their love for each other because of their child death. Amy realizes she can’t handle the fact that her husband has less sympathy about their baby death than she does. “Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it! I must get out of here. I must get air. I don’t know rightly whether any man can.” (Frost 40). Amy, illustrates how she wants to leave him to go with someone else, even though

"Home Burial" is unfortunately a reflection of the reality that many marriages fail in the event of a child's death. A lack of communication, both verbally and physically, tears apart two people even without a tragedy as profound as the one that Frost and his wife experienced. Frost's work is an expression of the more serious and traumatic side of nature and reveals the consequences of

I feel more sympathy for the husband is Robert Frost’s poem Home Burial. In the poem I get a feeling that the husband and wife do not communicate very well. From reading the poem I get the sense that Amy, the wife, wants her husband to automatically be aware of what she is feeling and why, however that is not fair. It is impossible for anyone to know exactly how one feels without asking. I can tell by this passage, “My words are nearly always and offense/ I don’t know how to speak of anything/ So as to please you” (Home Burial, 48-50), that the husband really wants to support his wife by understanding her pain, although, the wife seems to get very angry and irritated when the husband even asks and tries to make an effort, “But I may be taught” (Home Burial, 50)

The poems Home Burial by Robert Frost and The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter by Ezra Pound have related themes. In both poems, the themes that are brought out by these renowned poets have a similar discourse. Home burial is a poem that centers on a wife and her husband who are in agony after losing their first child. The wife is agitated and is on the brink of going out of marriage. She dislikes the apathy in which her husband views the death of their first born. On the other hand, the husband is aggravated too. However, he has since accepted that death is part of human beings. As a matter of fact, he dug the grave of his child. The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, the poem is a letter that is written by a tender woman who is in a marriage, that has started out with distance between the two emotionally, and then concludes with distance from the river. The poem explains the distress the maiden is passing through since her husband went away. She is only sixteen and cannot fathom why her husband is taking five months to get home.