A CONSUMERIST ANALYSIS OF ROBERT FROST’S THE DEATH OF THE HIRED MAN:A SYNTHESIS OF ADAM SMITH AND KARL MARX

Abstract

 Robert Frost’s narrative poem The Death of the Hired Man (1914) seems nothing more than a conversation between a husband and a wife about a dying laborer in its first glance. But taken from the perspective of political economy, it shows a deep commentary on the dynamics of labor under capitalism. This paper also explores this typical poem of Frost with the theoretical understandings of Karl Marx and Adam Smith to highlight the systemic errors in the practices of capitalist labor to the extent they connect to the exploitation and alienation of labor and ultimately proves that Frost’s poem is a critique of capitalist practices in terms of its labor.