The Death of the Hired Man

When Warren agrees to go to the kitchen and talk with Silas, Mary waits for him outside and says she will watch to see whether that “small, sailing” cloud will “hit or miss” the moon (Lines 167-68). The late autumn moon casts the farm in a silvery richness. Earlier, Mary spread her apron as if to gather up the radiant light, symbolizing her generous spirit.

Now, as she waits, she watches as the cloud crosses the moon, casting the farm into a darker night. The choreography of the cloud obscuring the moon symbolizes death, specifically the death of the hired man himself but more broadly the death that awaits each person. Frost suggests that even if life seems difficult, full of unanticipated tragedies (symbolized by the night itself), death awaits, and death will make the dark, darker. The poem closes with the couple helpless now to help Silas. They are left in that forbidding dark with only each other for consolation, symbolized by their holding hands.

The moral dilemma that centers Frost’s narrative—whether the farm couple should take in the itinerant farmhand—pivots on money in three ways. First, Warren cannot forgive Silas for abandoning the haying job before it was done, voiding without cause their contract.