Letting Go and Forgetting

http://www.internal.org/Robert_Frost/Ghost_House

Everyone feels haunted when someone dies. They see the deceased in dreams and in their thoughts. Many can never seem to let go. Their loved ones are dead; they need to move on. It is the most heartbreaking action to do sometimes: letting go. In Ghost House by Robert Frost, the tone is filled with beauty, yet longing, loneliness, and sorrow as it describes a lonely house with two ghosts haunting it. His poems are usually hard to understand at first, but even when the reader cannot understand the words, it's the fluency and the beautiful imagery that draws them in. Usually, ghosts are supposed to be scary, but somehow, the reader cannot help feeling for them as well as the speaker. Robert Frost shows in his poem the pain of living without someone.

How can anyone live without a loved one? This question comes up much of the time in today's books. The Hunger Games, the Twilight series.... The one piece of literature anyone's mind goes immediately to is William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Both Romeo and Juliet believe they cannot live without one another and because of their families have been enemies since who knows when, they kill themselves. Most people do not realize the idea of being rational. Many would agree with Lady Capulet in saying "Therefore have done. Some grief shows much of love;/ But much of grief shows still some want of wit," (3.5 73-74) In other words, although grieving shows a great amount of love, it also shows some need to see reason : There is no way tears can bring a loved one back. The whole poem gives a sense of how the speaker's world has fallen apart. "And left no trace but the cellar walls,/ And a cellar in which the daylight falls...." The poem is pretty much made up of symbols. The speaker makes it sound like he has no life beyond this house of ruins, making the house reflect his world.

One of the pains is when people forget while others remember. When people do not remember, how can they support others? Everyone needs to remember what pains the person to be able to help. "I dwell with a strangely aching heart/ In that vanished abode there far apart/ On that disused and forgotten road...." In these lines, it shows that the speaker's world is far from everyone else's, but also they have forgotten the pain. Their worlds have not fallen apart as his has. Everyone forgets so easily because they do not feel the pain as much. If anyone ever loved, they would feel broken. This is why it is so easy for them to forget and move on with their lives.

Robert Frost shows in his poem the pain of living without someone. Any person's world can fall apart at the loss of a loved one. Many people today are never the same after someone's death. The person may have not have been of much importance in their life before, but everyone is affected. The only difference between someone truly broken and just anyone is that the person who is broken will remember and the just anyone can forget. With all this, I have to go back to my experience with suicide on my mind. I have no doubt everyone does not wish to hear about it, but I told my mom about my suicidal thoughts. Anyone have any clue what she said? She said she would never be the same if I died. I know for a fact that this is true. My mother has always tried to protect me (from the Board of Ed., my dad, false friends taking advantage of me) and whenever her children are unhappy, so is she. My mother would not easily forget, but I have no doubt almost everyone else will mourn my loss for awhile(Maybe not even.) and then forget me.