"Home Burial" and The Closure of Gaps
             While reading "Home Burial" I encountered many gaps. These smaller gaps seemed to lead me to one main gap, which I picked to concentrate on. The gap was, what did the man do to upset his wife, and how was the man and wife's relationship? Since the gap did not come from a particular point of the poem, but the poem as a whole, I feel that it sums up the entire meaning of the poem. I think that this gap was caused by not knowing how to read the characters' emotions and actions. A critical step in my reading of the poem, was not actually reading the text, but watching a video version of the poem.
             Robert Frost's poem "Home Burial" is an interesting poem because it focuses around the death of a child but concentrates primarily on the relationship problems between the parents. This poem is attention grabbing because so many different emotions were involved and the couple's marriage was at stake, which causes many gaps. Throughout the poem there are moments of uncertainty that the reader encounters because of a lack of knowledge; dogmatic, close-minded, thinking; or intentional ambiguity created by the author. While I read this poem I had to use different methods of closing the many gaps I found, such as assumptions based on other details, outside knowledge, but found that for this particular poem that best way to close many of my gaps was through the video and actually seeing the husband and wife interact.
             During my first reading of the poem, I felt sympathy towards the wife because she had just lost her son and her husband seemed not to care or was even abusive. I felt that the woman was scared of her husband because of her frightened actions, like how she was "shrinking beneath his arm." Also the husband seemed to have an overpowering tone of voice and seemed demanding, like how he told her not to leave. I feel that I filled this gap,...