Perspective and Minimization in Robert Frost’s “Home Burial”

            Robert Frost’s “Home Burial” features a couple changing positions, physically ascending and descending to each other’s levels on their home stairs as they figuratively determine the proper perspective with which to give the death of their first son. The first stanza begins with a husband at “the bottom of the stairs” (1) while his wife, Amy, delays a hesitating step from the top of them in order to “raise herself” (5) and peer through the window at her son’s grave. The husband advances up the steps as he attempts to see what has caught her attention; he must change his position in order to assess what is important to her. “She [cowers] under him” (11), however, once he reaches her level. Both Amy’s figure and her grief are minimized by her husband’s presence.
            His descriptions of the source of her sadness—“the little graveyard” (24), framed by “so small the window” (25), “not so much larger than a bedroom” (26), and filled with “little slabs” (28)—reflects the insignificance with which he considers it. His minimization is repeated in Line 65 when, after a plea to be “let […] into [her] grief” (62), he declares: “I do think, though, you overdo it a little.”