Literature

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Who is most sympathetic here, the husband or Amy? Defend your position using evidence from the poem
Even if the “Home Burial” mainly focuses on showing Amy’s need to escape from the problems she is facing in her house and marriage, we also learn of her moral control. As he was digging his first child’s grave, the husband discovered his own escape. The poem starts with the wife at a metaphoric superiority position, at the top of the stairs where she was just looking at her son’s grave and ignoring her husband’s stare. She was the center of attention to her husband. Her looks back were intended to control his gaze. “Looking back at some fear”.
The “Home Burial” poem opens with Amy sadly looks through the window at her child’s window. Amy’s husband, who is standing at the bottom of the stairs doesn’t understand why her wife looks distressed all of a sudden. In this poem, Amy appears to be more sympathetic than her husband. The death of her child seems to stress her, and she mourns the death of her child. However, her husband does not seem distressed, and Amy perceives his way of mourning as selfish and brutal.

Her inability to mourn and loneliness of death portrays Amy to be more sympathetic than her husband. Thought the poem, she remains affected by her husband’s temporary control. However, her husband tends to be impervious even with the death of their child. In the process, Amy even wants to leave their marriage which instills some fear in her husband, “The Fear” that led to him breaking the silence to solve their problems.

Amy shows him as a “blind creature” who does not have the ability to see.
His response to this reveals uncovers part of Amy’s fear: the fear of being used as the instrument of childbearing. Her husband frames the child’s graveyard as something that is not that important
” You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.
God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,
A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.’”
He turns it into a portrait that should appear in the family gallery. This painful analogy shows his capability of lacerating her wife within a short time and a few words. The death of their child does not seem to affect the husband as much it affects Amy, she seems to be more. In marriage, the death of the first child is quite disturbing. After the death of their first child threatens the relationship between Amy and her husband rendering their love void.