"The Death of the Hired Man," also written in 1914, pits wife and husband in a confrontation over infirmity and self-esteem. As Mary and Warren tiptoe around a touchy subject — old Silas' return to the farm on the pretense of performing short-term labor — they debate indirectly the same question of values that fuels "Home Burial." Mary, who shelters tender feelings, wants Warren to lower his voice to spare Silas the insult of Warren's disdain for him. As for the question of having Silas ditch the meadow, an unnecessary task, Mary assures Warren that the ruse is a "humble way to save [Silas'] self-respect."
The couple's low-key debate featuring the dynamics of feminine mode versus masculine mode resurrects the confrontation between actively doing and passively existing. Like the husband in "Home Burial," Warren is a doer. His physicality clashes on prickly occasions when he can't see the logic in merely being a friend to Silas. The opposite of Warren is Mary, who recognizes that Silas feels outclassed by Harold Wilson, the self-important collegian, whose academic accomplishments outrank Silas' skill in bunching hay into "big birds' nests." At the crux of the confrontation, Mary speaks Frost's most beloved aphorism: "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in."
The homely, almost stumbling cadence conceals the altruism of Mary's gift of grace. Lest the reader doubt Frost's poetic thrust, he ends with three linked images — "the moon, the little silver cloud, and she" — a metaphorical preface to Warren's squeeze on the hand and somber announcement that Silas has died.
