The Story Archive

The Death of the Hired Man

Robert Frost · 1914 CE · Poem · Modern / American · Modernist

Mary sits in the doorway waiting for Warren to come back from market so she can tell him before he sees for himself that Silas has turned up again, the hired man who always left them at haying time for better wages elsewhere. She wants him treated kindly; her husband wants to know what claim a man has who quits when he is most needed, and why he has not gone to the prosperous brother a few miles down the road. Their argument over what home means, in blank verse pitched at ordinary New England speech, is the most quoted exchange Frost wrote.

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