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Home Burial CommonLit Answers – FREE Access
Find the answer key for the topic “Home Burial” below:
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Discussion Questions & Answers
Following are our answers based on the questions provided:
Q.1. The wife and husband have different ways of grieving. In your opinion, is there a right or wrong way to grieve?
Ans: There’s no right or wrong way to grieve. Grieving is a highly individual experience; there’s no right or wrong way to grieve. How you grieve depends on many factors, including your personality and coping style, your life experience, your faith, and how significant the loss was to you. Inevitably, the grieving process takes time.
Q.2. Throughout their conversation, the wife and husband walk up and down the stairs. How do the stairs and one’s placement on the stairs symbolize power or lack thereof? Cite evidence from the text that supports your answer.
Ans: Their different placement on the stairs symbolizes conflicting positions in terms of dealing with their grief. The wife is still struggling with her grief over the loss of her baby with her position near the window. The husband has dealt with his sorrow more successfully, as evidenced by his position at the bottom of the staircase, close to the door and the outside world.
Ultimately, each character is isolated from the others at opposite ends of the staircase. He saw her from the bottom of the stairs. “Before she saw him. She was starting down, looking back over her shoulder at some fear. She took a doubtful step and then undid it to raise herself and look again”.
For the marriage to succeed, each character must travel an equal distance up or down the staircase to meet the other. The husband attempts to empathize with his wife, moving up the staircase toward her and essentially moving backward in his journey toward acceptance of his child’s death. Even so, the wife is unable to empathize with her husband. He saw her from the bottom of the stairs.
Q.3. How does Robert Frost build suspense in the poem? Cite specific passages and literary devices that support your answer. What is the most suspenseful moment for you in “Home Burial”? Why?
Ans: He builds suspense by changing the tone as the man and wife struggle. The most suspenseful moment for me is when the wife moves further downstairs, away from her husband with a daunting look. The husband then asks, almost rhetorically, if a man can talk about the death of a son – in a woman’s presence.
Her reply to this is cutting and straight to the point. Some might even say cruel:
‘Not you!…
Q.4. In the context of this poem, what can we learn from tragedy? Cite evidence from this text, your own experience, and other literature, art, or history in your answer.
Ans: One tragedy can cause another to occur. There are limits of communication between the husband and wife while they are grieving. Each person fails to appreciate the other’s grieving process—fails to credit it, allow it, and have patience with it. This leads to misunderstanding and eventually breaks down their marriage.
Q.5. In the context of this poem, how do people face death? Cite evidence from this text, your own experience, and other literature, art, or history in your answer.
Ans: People have different ways of grieving. The wife remarks that most people make only the pretense of following a loved one to the grave, when in truth their minds are “making the best of their way back to life / And living people, and things they understand.” She, however, will not accept this kind of grief, and will not turn from the grave back to the world of living, for to do so is to accept the death. Instead, she declares that “the world’s evil.”
The husband, on the other hand, has accepted the death. Time has passed, and he might be more likely now to say, “That’s the way of the world,” than, “The world’s evil.” He did grieve, but the outward indications of his grief were quite different from those of his wife. He threw himself into the horrible task of digging his child’s grave—into physical work. This action further associates the father with a “way-of-the-world” mentality, with the cycles that make up the farmer’s life, and with an organic view of life and death. The father did not leave the task of burial to someone else, instead, he physically dug into the earth and planted his child’s body in the soil.
Assessment Questions & Answers
Following are our answers based on the questions provided:
Q.1. Compare and contrast the wife and husband’s ways of grieving. How are they similar, and how are they different? Cite evidence from the text.
Ans: The husband and wife are similar in the fact that both of them are greatly devastated that their child is now deep under a tomb. Also, they are similar in the way they always look at the grave of their child. As mentioned in the poem, “There are three stones of slate and one of marble, Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight. On the sidehill. We haven’t to mind those. But I understand: it is not the stones, But the child’s mound—” (Lines 25-30)
On the other hand, the husband and the wife have differences in the way they grieve. The husband is more open to the death of their child. However, the wife is close-minded about the death of their child. As mentioned in the poem, “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,'” (Line 30) the wife cries because she does not want to talk to his husband about the death. While his husband just replied, “Can’t a man speak of his child he’s lost?” (Line 35) because he wants to talk about it. Also, the two are different in fact that the wife is more emotional in losing her child in comparison to his husband. While his husband is more on the objective of fixing their ruined relationship because of their loss.
Q.2. PART A: Which TWO answers best depict the central themes in the poem?
Ans: Death & Grief
Q.3. PART B: Which TWO quotes from the poem best support the answers to Part A?
Ans: “A man must partly give up being a man / With women-folk.” (Lines 52-53) & “‘No, from the time when one is sick to death, / One is alone, and he dies more alone.'” (Lines 104-105)
Q.4. PART A: What does the word “inconsolably” most closely mean as it is used in line 68?
Ans: Unable or unwilling to be comforted
Q.5. PART B: Which phrase from the text best supports the answer to Part A?
Ans: “You’d think his memory might be satisfied”
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Conclusion
In CommonLit, “Home Burial ” is one of the students’ favorite short stories authored by Robert Frost for grade 12 students.
“Home Burial” explores a wife & husband’s grief over losing their child. As their grieving processes differ greatly, they struggle to understand one another, causing tension between them.
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Hi, I’m Annie Smith, and I’ve been a teacher for over 5 years and have taught students at all levels. I love to help students get ahead of their exams and provide helpful guides on various topics.