Theme of Death in Poetry (Essay Example)

Poems are a great way to express one’s ideas and feelings, often using short and beautiful sentences. Death is a common theme in poems. I will compare and contrast two famous poems: “Graveyard Blues” by Natasha Trethewey and “Home Burial” by Robert Frost. Both poems talk about death and personal loss. Everyone knows that death is a part of life and it cannot be avoided. Trethewey expresses her grief towards her mother’s death and Frost talks about the death of a child in his poem and how it is affecting the couple’s marriage. After carefully reading and analyzing both poems; I've concluded that Trethewey is experiencing tremendous loss and loneliness, which has caused the world around her to slow down. As a result, she notices small details such as the sound of mud, and holes on road. Frost's poem focuses on grief rather than death since it is about how the husband and wife expressed their grief after their child died. Both poets suffered from the loss of their parents at a considerably young age which might be one of the reasons that they wrote this poem. Frost does not mention anything about how their child died whereas in Trethewey’s poem we know that her mother was shot and killed by her stepfather.    

The two poems are similar and very distinct at the same time. Frost’s “Home Burial” is a poem about the conversation between a husband and wife named Amy after their child's death. This poem is written in Blank Verse with no rhythm. The poem begins with Frost mentioning Amy standing at the top of the stairs. She is looking at her child’s grave from the window. Her husband dug that grave and he is standing at the bottom of the stairs. He asked her why she looked terrified and what is she looking at. She does not answer his questions or respond to him at all. He goes to the top of the stars where she was standing and at the same time she comes down. He looked outside of the window and noticed their child’s grave. He says, “The little graveyard where my people are!”, describing their child’s grave. He also compared the size of the grave with that of a bedroom by saying, “Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?”. His comments about the grave made Amy angry and sad. She interrupted him and cried while saying the word “don’t” several times. He responded, ”Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?” but she says that he must not because it hurts her feeling when she is reminded of her dead child. She wants to leave her husband because she knows that he had buried their child. She says, “If you had any feelings, you that dug/With your own hand—how could you?—his little grave;”, which proves that her husband dug their child’s grave. She accused him of not having feelings for their child because he himself dug the grave. She couldn’t believe how he get over their loss so easily as she is still in shock. She feels that she is the only parent who cares about their child. Frost used the stairs where the husband and wife are standing as a metaphor that describes their life. Throughout the poem, the husband and wife do not stand on the same level on the stairs. In the beginning, the wife was at the top of the stairs and the husband was at the bottom. Basically, they were never on the same page in their life due to the lack of communication, different ways of thinking, and not being able to understand each other. The death of their child is causing the death of their marriage. Applying the concept of the poem as a walk, Amy wants to be far away from her husband. It seems that the distance between them is increasing in terms of their relationship because they expressed grief in different ways. She says, “I must get out of here. I must get air.” and “‘You—oh, you think the talk is all. I must go—/Somewhere out of this house. How can I make you—’”, which indicates that she wants to leave the house. The image of the poem is painful because they can see the grave of their child from the window as the grave is in their backyard.  

The poem “Graveyard Blues” is a dark poem about death. It resembles closely to Shakespearian sonnet. The rhyme scheme of this poem is AAA/BBB/CCC/DDD/EE. The foot of this poem is iambic pentameter. She begins this poem by describing a part of her life in which she is going from church to the grave. She also gives a description of the weather by mentioning it was raining from church to the grave. I think she feels lonely and sad because keeps noticing little things such as the sound of mud, rain, and holes on road. I think the line “Death stops the body’s work, the soul’s a journeyman”, is very important here. She meant that after the death of a person the body doesn’t work but the soul will still be alive. The soul of a person is immortal. In the third stanza, she describes that the sun looked down at her and as she leaves it seems that she shows her back to her mother. Usually, the sun in the poems describes joy and happiness but it doesn’t describe happiness in this poem. In this stanza, I understand that the dead person here is her mother. In the fourth stanza, she talks about the holes in the road as she goes to her home. To avoid those holes she slows down her can but still, the wheel of time is rolling and it doesn’t stop. It suggests that we cannot slow down the time. Applying the poem as a walk, she takes the readers on a journey from the funeral to going back home and visiting her mother’s grave. She expresses her solitude and feeling of emptiness inside of her. She says, ”The road going home was pocked with holes,/That home-going road’s always full of holes;”, which represents her state of complete emptiness. In the last couplet, she uses a metaphor when she said, “My mother’s name, stone pillow for my head.”. She is describing her mother’s grave as a stone pillow. She wandered among the names of the dead because when she goes to visit her mother’s grave she passes by other graves of dead people. Though the whole poem is about death, I didn’t find the tone of this poem to be sad or depressing. I think the poet might be in shock due to the loss of her mother. Through this poem, I was able to imagine how someone would feel at the funeral when they lose their loved ones.  

Trethewey, Amy, and Amy’s husband expressed grief in different ways. It seems that Trethewey gets over her mother’s death because her mother died when she was 19 years old and it's been sometime after her mother’s death. Her pain is healing with time. Whereas, Amy could not believe it and she is not ready to accept that her child has died. She expressed her anger towards her husband because he buried their child and she thinks that he moved on from the death easily. Considering her husband’s view, he thinks that burying his child’s body is the last and only thing that he could do for him. It is important to consider the time at which both the poems were written because of the cultural differences. “Home Burial” was published in 1915 whereas “Graveyard Blues” was published in 2012. Around the time Frost wrote this poem, men were the breadwinner in society and they were considered stronger than women. They do not express their feelings to anyone. That is the reason why he is not able to understand what Amy is going through. Also, the start of World War I occurred about the time Frost wrote this poem. This explains what the theme and context of the poem are based on.  

Frost’s poems are about life, human, love, nature, loneliness, and mortality. Whereas, Trethewey writes about family, race, history, and her past life events. Both poets have different writing styles and topics. Though “Home Burial” and “Graveyard Blues”  have a common theme of death, solitude, and grief, both the poems and the characters reacted to death in different ways. Trethewey has accepted her mother’s death. In “Home Burial”, on the one hand, Amy couldn't accept her child's death, on the other hand, her husband did. Frost and Trethewey had also written poems that addressed real-world issues.   

Considering both the poems together, it offers a sense of how people react when they lose loved ones. It also shows how this loss can affect their own life. In Frost’s “Home Burial” the death of their child is causing the loss of their marriage. Trethewey’s poem is more about solitude. She expresses her thoughts and feelings. Frost shows how the couple felt after the tragic loss of their child. Specifically, how their relationship changed and possibly ended. He depicts that communication plays an important role here. The husband was not able to express his feelings and thoughts properly to his wife which lead to the wife wanting to go away from him. The poem does not solve their pain or provide any ideas about how one should react when one encounters a similar situation.