The Mending Wall, a poem written by Robert Frost, outlines the human instinct of placing boundaries and the necessity of them. He does so using a scenario in which two neighbors go through great lengths to maintain a fence between their homes. They barely associate themselves with one another, and they rarely see each other except for when they are repairing the fence that keeps them separated. I feel that I am able to connect with this piece especially well because throughout my life I have held similar metaphorical walls around myself. Thus, this piece identifies a major part of my nature
“Mending Wall” a poem by Robert Frost seems to take place in countryside estate. Main theme in the poem is, whether the wall is necessary to have the good relation between neighbors. Narrator seems to think the wall is not so necessary as it separates him and his neighbor. However, he does find talking to his neighbor about the wall. but does provide a sense of privacy which is not bad. Frost is separating habit and and tradition on one side and logics on another. Frost is drawing tradition on one side and logic and reason on one side. He says that sometimes it is unnecessary to put an extra efforts on something that is useless. And maybe not, fences does not good
Robert Frost was an American poet, born in San Francisco but got his first published poetry in a collection while living in England. Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” was published in 1914 and started his second collection of work. “Mending Wall” is a sociological poem about a wall dividing two pieces of land and neighbors in rural New England. The poem eludes two differences in people in our society and the lack of reasoning and justification we have for the actions we fabricate. “Mending Wall” represents the walls and barriers that still remain in society today both physically and mentally.
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.
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.
Similar to “Acquainted with the Night,” isolation is a major theme in “Mending Wall.” In “Mending Wall,” there are two characters: the speaker and the neighbor. The two characters have two different opinions on what make a “good neighbor.” The neighbor views walls as a crucial object in
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 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,
Building physical and emotional walls has a negative impact on the people, countries, and civilizations they divide. In the case of Frost's poem, the wall took away the narrator's voice. The narrator disliked the wall, but was too timid to speak up for what he believes in. His neighbor says "good walls make good neighbors," but the narrator felt as if the wall should be torn down, and they should unite
Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” and its parody by Kenneth Koch “Mending Sump” have a tightly wound connection of style, situation, and irony. Frost, being a man of simplicity when it comes to the writing of his poetry, narrates about boundaries and how necessary they are in any relationship. He criticizes his neighbor
Mahatma Gandhi once said that “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.” This idea is supported by the short story “The Interlopers” by Saki and the poem “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost, which are both stories about two people continuing an outdated feud or tradition that is not needed anymore. In these works, the authors use conflict, metaphors, and characterization to convey that old traditions are often pointless to carry on, especially if the tradition creates a feud between two people or families, because the feud is most likely also outdated and therefore not needed anymore.
In Roberts, Mending Wall, he expresses the alienation within our society. This story was and is very controversial throughout history. Written in 1914, it became widely known for its connection with racism and segregation. In 1960, Frost was asked to read it for President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. In JFK’s inauguration speech, he declared, “We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom”(Kennedy), which shows how he felt about segregation. This created a skirmish throughout the U.S., because this poem was so controversial. The poem, which was a memory when Frost was a young boy, consists of him walking the line. Walking the line means picking up rocks that had falling from the ice melting, recreating the fence between you and your neighbor. Frost suggests alienation in this story by using symbolism of the lines between African Americans and white folk. In the poem he asks the question, “Why do they make good neighbors”(line 30)? An interpretation of this line is that he is asking the question, ‘why do we have these lines between our people? There is no reasons to have these lines separating us?’. The poem suggests that we get into routines and then never break them because we have done them for generations. Frost challenges this, asking questions that are very hard to answer.
The poem “Mending Wall’ is very interesting to me. The wall is there to keep boundaries. One man thinks it unnecessary to have this wall
Robert Frost is describing a process in "Mending Wall", which is repairing a wall that separates his territory and his neighbor's. The wall was deteriorated during the winter, when the cold frost created cracks and gaps in the wall. He uses a nearly infantile imagination to unravel the mystery of the damage that appeared suddenly in spring. While they are tediously laboring to reconstruct the fence, Frost is imploring his neighbor about the use of the wall; his apple trees can be clearly distinguished from his neighbor's pine trees. Yet underneath this quotidian routine, Frost goes beyond the surface to reveal its figurative meaning.
Frost used a distinct way of writing throughout his poem that not only hooked the reader into the story, but also made them question their own views of walls, both physical and psychological. In the poem it is displayed that walls can be both good and bad. The wall that the narrator sees as the embodiment of what separates them, it is actually the one thing that brings them together every spring. Near the end, the narrator brings back the original question, what is the something? With this poem, maybe Frost wanted the reader to examine themselves and their surroundings and try to answer the question of tradition, and how they unite us and separates us at the same time. The narrator’s neighbor is the personification of the old ways and custom in the poem, it is evident as he is constantly repeating “good fences make good neighbors” (Frost 245) and the fact that “he will not go behind his father’s saying” (Frost 246). Even though, good fences make good neighbors is a well-known proverb, people will eventually ask themselves: Why is it necessary to have fences to build good