Robert Frost's Mending Wall

The poem “Mending Wall” is told from the point of view of the speaker who joins his neighbor in rebuilding the stone wall that divides their land properties. As the speaker states in the opening line, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” (Frost, 1914, Line 1). He speaks of all the different actions that works against the wall, an example of that is the “frozen-ground-swell”, (Frost,1914, Line 2). Once the winter has passed and spring has come the neighbors mends their fences and stone walls, 'But at spring mending-time we find them there' (Frost, 1914, Line 11), that is when he calls on his neighbor and they meet to mend the wall.

They begin to walk along the wall, each man on the opposite side, fixing the broken spots as they go. They picked up the fallen stones, some like bread loves and others like spheres that wobble and threaten to fall.

The neighbor who is telling the poem asks the neighbor why is there a wall to separate them.

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The neighbor replies by saying ' Good fences make good neighbors' (Frost, 1914, Line 27). The neighbor who is telling the poem honestly believes there is no need for a wall to seperate them, so he questions the neighbor again only to hear the neighbor say it again in the the same exact words ' Good fences make good neighbors' (Frost, 1914, Line 45). The key imagery is for the neighbor who wants the wall to remain up is to maintain boundaries. The other neighbor has made it very clear that the only way to maintain boundaries is for a wall to be present.

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Even though the neighbor who is telling the poem is wondering about why the wall is needed and was given an answer, he still can not seem to wrap his head around the response. Even though the other neighbor feels the wall is necessary to maintain healthy relationships in life.

The way Frost wrote this poem it starts off as a mystery to be solved. He wrote it as though he hates it was personal and impersonal within the same sentence. In the wide- range sense, that natural and human forces paying no mind for the wall’s integrity. I know every person take on this poem is different, some may feel it is actually about a wall. I however, feel it is about human relationships and the mending of relationships. As the poem goes on and the speaker begins to talk with his neighbor on the question of the wall’s need to be there. It becomes clear that the speaker himself is an agent of these order to inorder forces, that seems to be a container for the “thing”, that doesn’t love a wall.” The speaker acknowledges this truth, claiming that “spring is the mischief in me,” before questioning his neighbor’s, “Good fences make good neighbors.” But, when we look closely at Frost’s best poems, what begins in traditional culture and customs, straightforwardness ends in complex open to more than one interpretation. The speaker would like for us to believe that there are two types of people: those who shows determination not to change his position on the wall, who insist on building superfluous walls and one who would like to stop working on the wall as wall builders and wall breakers.

Each line almost different from one another, both symbolize the deliberately constructed barriers humans seem to certain happen between themselves. Even though the main character finds the wall unnecessary, he tells his neighbor how it is time for them to mend the wall. To me “mending walls” is the not so much a physical wall, yet the boundaries that we set to know how far to go with each other. 'We wear our fingers rough with handling them' (Foster,1914. line 20) when i read this in the poem, my immediate thought was that when trust is broken, we intent to handle people differently than you would have before that mistrust. Overall, what I got from this poem is that, two people had mistrust between them to happen and as winter, spring and so on has they have slowly tried to repair their relationships. By the end, of the poem it is unclear if the neighbors has made up, from what I got from the poem they were still mending the mistrust, that had made them wrong apart.

Updated: Feb 11, 2022
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Robert Frost's Mending Wall. (2022, Feb 11). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/robert-frost-s-mending-wall-essay

Robert Frost's Mending Wall essay
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