Home

In my lit class this week we have been discussing Robert Frost and his poetry. I've never been one for poetry and have been forced to write what I would consider the worlds worst poetry. Occasionally I'll come across poems in school that I really like or learn something from. This was the case with Robert Frost. He uses metaphors from nature to reveal things about mankind. One poem in particular hit home for me. "The Death of the Hired Man" is one that without a little bit of interpretation, I would have passed over as a pointless poem. I would post it here for all to read, but it is quite long. I can sum it up for you.

Mary is waiting for her husband Warren, to come home because she has news for him. She hears his footsteps and meets him on the front porch to tell him that their old seasonal hired man is back. This annoyed Warren because the hired man, named Silas, was not the most reliable person ever. The couple is sitting on the porch discussing this man and his life. They talked about how unreliable he is. He tends to leave his work whenever he wants to. Warren was ready to tell Silas to leave when Mary tells him that the man has changed. That something is different this time. "Warren," she said, "he has come home to die:" Warren scoffs that Silas would call the place home. Warren then gives his idea of home. He says that home is "the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Mary qickly replies that she would "have called it something you somehow haven't to deserve."

Mary knocked the ball out of the park with her definition of home. She is saying that Home isn't a place you have to earn or deserve. It is your resting place. I loved that because it is a close analogy (even though Frost was a religous doubter) to our home in Heaven. We don't have to deserve it but it is given to us all the same. It isn't a place that God feels like he has to "take you in." He wants you there. In fact He died so that you would in fact get to be there. While Frost meant to analyze man kind, he did a great job of painting a picture of what home is.