Frost, Hughes, Alexie the Meaning of \"Home\"

Frost, Hughes, Alexie

The Meaning of "Home" in Frost's "Hired Hand," Hughes' "Landlord" and Alexie's "I Will Redeem"

Robert Frost writes in "The Death of the Hired Hand," "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in" (122-3). Implicit in these lines is the notion that "home" carries certain rules. "Home" is not just a place devoid of higher meaning, but an abstract idea -- a concept bound by a principle of belonging, of submitting, of caring. Just as Langston Hughes shows in "Ballad of the Landlord" (with the tension between negligent landlord and suffering tenant) or as Sherman Alexie shows in "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" (Jackson sharing a portion of his winnings with Mary, whom he considers family -- "It's an Indian thing"), the principles of "home" are understood and upheld by those who realize its deeper meaning. This paper will analyze the way these three works portray that deeper meaning.

Sherman Alexie's Jackson illustrates the main principle of "home" when he hands a fifth of his lottery winnings to the check-out girl who sold him the ticket. He insists that according to the rules of his tribe, "When you win, you're supposed to share with your family." Mary (the check-out girl) answers, "I'm not your family." Jackson replies, "Yes, you are," and makes her take the $20. She takes it, realizing that in a larger, communal sense, they are family. The realization puts a smile on her face. It is this "sense" that prompts Robert Frost's Silas to return to the farm of Mary and Warren in "The Death of the Hired Man." Silas is an old, beaten-down, mostly worthless farmhand, who has a tendency to wander away from the job just when he is needed most. Warren wants nothing to do with him, but Mary cannot help but feel a profound sympathy for Silas. She sees in him a man in need, a man not to be turned away or denied shelter -- because, after all, he is a man. Never mind the fact that his own brother judges him and puts distance between them. Never mind the fact that he has his faults, his pride which won't allow him "to beg and be beholden" (Frost 21). Warren relents a tad at his wife's characterization of Silas: does he recognize in the pathetic old man a reflection of his own inner self? If he does the reflection is almost instantly dismissed. Warren believes home is something that is deserved. It is his wife Mary who knows that it is something that is freely given.

Is it a coincidence that both women (in Alexie's story and in Frost's poem) are named Mary? Does it mean something that both possess name given to the Second Eve in Christian theology, the woman who gives birth to Christ, the Savior of mankind? The implications of the name "Mary" are many and deep -- and fitting in both cases as it is used in Alexie's short story and in Frost's story-like poem. In each, Mary "gets" the meaning of "family" and "home." She "gets" the law that binds all men together, that unites them all under one roof (whether that roof is the roof of a community, a town, a single house, or the all-encompassing sky). Fraternal charity is that law. It is the law of Mary's Son in the New Testament, and it is the law that both Mary in "Hired Hand" and Mary in "I Will Redeem" recognize. "Home" means "family" and "family" means "home" -- and both depend upon the law of charity. Jackson reaps the benefits of adhering to that law when the mysterious pawn broker gives him the regalia that he cannot possibly afford (another symbol of the Redemption bought by Christ?), and Warren realizes the law only after Silas dies -- Warren takes his wife's hand in his own and looks with her up at the sky which houses them all and the cloud (a representation of Silas' soul?) that joins its brethren in front of the moon (the symbol of Mary used by the Jesuits -- for just as the Moon reflects the light of the Sun, so too does Mary reflect the Light of her Son).

In Hughes' "Ballad of the Landlord," there is no light, and the law of fraternal charity which serves as the foundation of "home" is circumvented by the landlord who calls upon an Earthly law to avoid having to follow the "spiritual" law that binds him as a landlord and provider of roofs over heads. He refuses to fix the steps or patch the roof and demands that his tenant pay. When the tenant rightly refuses, the landlord calls the police who take the tenant to prison. The landlord has no real sense of "home," evident in the fact that he allows his properties to become dilapidated. The reason he has no sense of "home," however, is he has no sense of the foundation which supports "home" -- he has no sense of fraternal charity.

The landlord wants only what he is owed: "Ten Bucks you say I owe you? / Ten Bucks you say is due?" asks the tenant with bitterness. But as St. Paul, one of Christ's followers, asserts -- the wages of sin is death. The landlord in insisting on collecting what he is owed is insisting on collecting Death. This may be symbolized by the fact that the tenant is hauled off to jail. Who will live in the home now? Hughes does not say, but at the poem's conclusion, the home seems to be in ruins -- and empty, just as the landlord's heart is empty of fraternal love -- one of the qualities needed to get to Christ's Heaven (the ultimate "home"). The landlord hasn't a thought for Christ's Heaven: his "home" is in the here and now (a fact which greatly separates him from the "homeless" Jackson, who has a better sense of "home" than the landlord; and from Frost's Mary, who appreciates that "home" transcends all indiscretions).

Warren is similar to the landlord in this sense: he hasn't the charity that Jackson has or that both Marys have. He sees only what he stands to gain (or lose) by admitting Silas to his farm. He does not understand what "home" means. He does not understand that Silas has come there for a reason -- that he has hoped to find shelter under their roof, kindness in their hearts. It is indeed a compliment to both Mary and Warren that he has come, "huddled against the barn-door fast asleep" (Frost 35). Warren perhaps senses the compliment, but his own pride doesn't want compliments. It takes Death to fully soften Warren's heart.