Analysis Of Mending Wall By Robert Frost

In life, many people have parts that they let people see of them, and other parts that they keep hidden. Many times, we build these walls to shut people out so people can never really see what is going on inside. These “walls” keep many of one’s deepest secrets hidden. In the poem, The Mending Wall, by Robert Frost, shows a mindset of two neighbors who continue to adjust and mend their wall between each other. This idea of confinement is seen throughout the poem to show that the neighbor is trying to protect themselves. This creates speculation upon the speaker of what exactly are they trying to hide. One might see this poem as meaning a physical barrier, but this is more of an emotional “wall” or barrier that this poem creates. In the poem,

Frost’s various speaking tones can be shown in his well-known poem “Mending Wall.” Throughout the poem the speaker’s voice is open and relaxed, yet, inward and musing. It helps welcome the reader and at the time entices the reader into a riddle which becomes essential to the poem’s meaning. The speaker’s eventual speculation about what might not “love a wall” becomes a description of the struggle of wall-mending and begins to wonder why he and his neighbor have met to carry out the task in the first place. The speaker’s range of tone throughout the poem varies from seriousness to fantasy to glee.

In today’s society, the barrier that we see most often are fences. We have fences around our houses, schools, hospitals, churches, factories – fences are everywhere. They are used to confine something or to keep others out. Since it is such a normal thing we see we do not question why fences exist. While it is territorial, there is also a social aspect to the physical barriers. With the safety of these fences, we are able to be friendly towards each other without overstepping the socially acceptable boundaries. One of the scenes we are most familiar with are when two neighbors have small talk while trimming their side of the hedge. With that small barrier between them, they have no fear of offending each other. If we see it from this perspective, the neighbor does not seem as foreign as we originally thought. After all, it would be weird to have a neighbor who shares the same yard as you, would it not? With the presence of the wall in this poem, it ensures an amicable relationship between the two neighbors. Again we go back to the notion that this annual meeting at the wall may be the only time the two rural neighbors gets to interact with each other before going back to their normal routine in life. The speaker may sneer at his neighbor’s outdated way of thinking and may observe his neighbor with unfamiliarity, but despite it all, he enjoys what small interaction he has with his

In Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall,” two neighbors meet annually to repair a wall that serves to separate their properties. The wall and the process of repairing the wall have multiple meanings and is open to interpretation. Throughout the poem, Frost employs numerous literary devices to express to the reader powerful images, and ideas as well as make the poem more interesting.

In his poem 'Mending Wall', Robert Frost presents to us the thoughts of barriers linking people, communication, friendship and the sense of security people gain from barriers. His messages are conveyed using poetic techniques such as imagery, structure and humor, revealing a complex side of the poem as well as achieving an overall light-hearted effect. Robert Frost has cleverly intertwined both a literal and metaphoric meaning into the poem, using the mending of a tangible wall as a symbolic representation of the barriers that separate the neighbors in their friendship.

He also uses other devices such as a pun, applied in the line, "And to whom I was like to give offence." The last word of the line simply emphasizes the importance of the subject, the fence. The most prominent figure of speech, however, is the ironic, "Good fences make good neighbors." This is completely opposite of the connotation of the poem. Fences do not make neighbors, but strangers that are apathetic towards each other. The neighbor seems to prefer this approach, to eliminate any risks of trespassing or offenses. Yet what the fence really does is hinder the development of friendship. This is comparable to the barriers of bitterness, anger, hate, and fear men put between one another that obstruct love and friendship.

Walls stop goods being transported from place to place. In Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall" people in East Germany cannot give things to people in West Germany. Also in Frost's "Mending Wall" the neighbors cannot exchange apples and pines. The walls block transportation of goods as much as they block people from each other. Nature itself even disapproves of man-made walls.

Like the neighbor in the poem that keeps away their house even being friend with the narrator, the neighbor keep everything to themselves. I tend to put wall between me and other people, if they want to be friend with me they have to break that wall that I built which can be hard because I never ever let anyone see the real me like how the neighbor never let anyone near their boundaries. Boundaries are important to some people, people who are quite like being alone wants peace or have problem probably that why they put wall around them and don’t let other people near them even if they’re hurting so bad they won’t admit it. The narrator keep mentioning that, “good fences make good neighbors” explaining that the neighbor wants to know more about the neighbor that the narrator is so interested in

Think about the poems “We Real Cool” and “Invictus.” How are the moods similar? How are the endings different? Answer:

Robert Frost's "The Mending Wall" is a comment on the nature of our society. In this poem, Frost examines the way in which we interact with one another and how we function as a whole. For Frost, the world is often one of isolation. Man has difficulty communicating and relating to one another. As a result, we have a tendency to shut ourselves off from others. In the absence of effective communication, we play the foolish game of avoiding any meaningful contact with others in order to gain privacy.

To start off, Robert Frost, uses the word “something” to symbolize nature. So then that line, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” (Frost, 1), is basically saying nature doesn’t love a wall. Throughout the poem there is an intense contrast between the speaker and the neighbor. The neighbor is laconic and traditional, while the speaker is much more distinctive with his words and feelings about “society”. The crucial lines in “Mending Wall” iis when Frost writes this, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And whom I was like to give offense”, (Frost, 32-34) this is explaining how for the action of “building a wall” would needed to be questioned, rather than followed without a doubt by a large quantity of society. Which is parallel to the act of nonconformity. The speaker is trying to get the neighbor to question, why? The speaker mentions that the neighbor only says “Good fences make good neighbors” (Frost, 27), but the speaker italicized “Why” in line 30. Which shows it is very important to him to question and to wonder, because it provides more

“Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family”(Joseph Brodsky). “The Mending wall” was written in 1914 by Robert Frost. This tells the story of a town and the walls that the townspeople love to keep, and even when the walls fall the townspeople will always build them right back up. The narrator of this story seems to question these walls however, all anyone around him can reply to this is that good fences make good neighbors. The people of this town keep the walls because it is what their parents did, and what their parents before did, a tradition of sorts. This story leaves us the question of whether or not fences make good neighbors? In some sense maybe, they keep property lines, help to keep some order in our crazy worlds, and even to protect ourselves. However, I do not think that the fences make good neighbors, I think that these fences divide us and keep us from making connections with others. Although these walls may protect us, they separate us and in the end do not make good neighbors.

He writes, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out [...] Good fences make good neighbors” (32; 45). The neighbor’s ironic use of the phrase “Good fences make good neighbors” illustrates that he insists that his beliefs are correct and without question. His lack of societal evolution indicates ironic unnaturality through syntax and word

In the story we read from Robert Frost called, “Mending Walls” we visualized the interaction between the Narrator and his neighbor. In other words, the narrator says, “We keep the wall between us as we go”, “ I let my neighbor know beyond the hill”, and several more quotes from his short story that relates to the mutual connection between the narrator, the wall, and of course the neighbor. Likewise, there are certain events in our real world where the walls were beneficial and cruel to our society; of course whenever it came down to it being cruel people immediately turned it down.