Mending Wall Annotation

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.

“Mending Wall” is about two neighbors who disagree over the need of a wall to separate their properties. Not only does the wall act as a

Self-discovery is often accompanied by internal metacognitive dialogue due to its ability to allow individuals to re-evaluate their outlook on life and develop a better understanding of the world. Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods’, his 1922 lyric poem provides a pre-eminent example of an internal monologue. Use of first person present tense language allows for the reader to relish the quiet splendour of the dark woods and ponder, if only for a moment, the allure of escaping indefinitely from the exhausting world of people and promises. The confronting and emotionally significant discovery of the persona’s morbid attraction to oblivion is conveyed through the furtive tone in the first stanza “He will not see me stopping here/ to watch this wood fill up with snow” suggesting a feeling of delight that may be associated with the deep, dark woods. Potent connotations of the words ‘dark’,

With that, a regional spirit of racism and bigotry is felt from the neighbor. The speaker scorns his neighbor’s wall building antics, but has no choice but to settle with them. Ironically though, the speaker is way more involved and indulged with the annual repairing of the wall more so than the neighbor. The speaker tends to “bug” the neighbor about the wall in a way and comes off very clingy. He seems very excited about repairing a wall that he despises. The speaker sets the day they will repair on the wall together and also informs. Regardless of the, dubious attitude that the speaker gives off, it seems that he is more tied to the mending-wall tradition, more than the neighbor. The speaker comes off more of a modern man, while the neighbor is stuck in ancient, with building a “wall”. However, the speaker is no different from the neighbor; he likes his privacy and his sense of ownership.

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.

While the narrator seems more willing to reach out to his neighbor, in the end, he does not. He does wonder why fences supposedly make good neighbors. For him, the question is what is he "walling in or walling out"? He seems to realize that he is "walling out" other people. As long as the symbolic wall stands between the neighbors, they will always be separated. Earlier in the poem, Frost uses the symbolism of a rabbit to seemingly reinforce this point. The hunters must destroy the wall in order to "have the rabbit out of hiding". The men, in turn must break down the walls between them if they are to come out of "hiding". The narrator seems to have a desire to point this out to his neighbor. However, he does not, simply dismissing his idea as "the mischief" that spring has instilled in him. He realizes that he is unable to communicate with his neighbor in any meaningful fashion and, thus, remains in isolation from him.

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

The speaker's neighbor prevent change because "He will not go behind his father saying" (Frost, Mending 43) keeping things as it was. The neighbor is stubborn, stagnate, and will not change because his father stated the wall is meant to be there. The metaphor in this

The author holds back the target our hero's love and flits between the axis of love and reason with all the grace of drunk gymnast. She is probably a “weaver”- a sorceress- a seductress. And he has probably been cheated or tricked by the her--the woman he loves to hate and hates to love-- while we sympathize with his heart break rather than

The long duration of the visuals and slow pans between the characters in the conversation juxtaposed with Tommy’s fast, nervous dialogue depicts the characters desperation while foreshadowing impending disappointment. Following the display of Tommy’s art work the camera pans to Madame and Miss Emily (a previous teacher from Hailsham) then back to a close up of Tommy’s and Kathy’s face, providing the audience with an intimate view of the fleeting hope in the young couple’s eyes. The close up shot of the characters makes the audience aware that disappointment is about to ensue. This is seconds prior to Kathy coming to the realization that deferrals from donations do not and never did exist.

Despite the speaker’s beliefs, he contradicts himself when he says “at spring” “I let my neighbor know beyond the hill” (11). This initiates the rebuilding of the wall each year and keeps a boundary between them. He violates the boundaries of his neighbor and creates mental wall between them by refusing to accept his neighbor’s views. The narrator believes that his neighbor is “like an old-stone savage” (40). His neighbor believes that by creating boundaries it will make their relationship better.

Frost uses personification by giving "Truth" human-like qualities such as interrupting the speaker. This personification alerts the reader that "Truth," or reality is a major part of the theme of this poem, by giving it

However, when the responders’ delves deeper into the poem, it is clear that at a allegorical level the wall is a metaphor representing the barrier that exists in the neighbours’ friendship. The first eleven lines of the poem if rife with imagery that describes the dilapidation of the wall. The first line of the poem emphasises that “something” exists that “doesn’t love a wall”. This personification makes the “something” seem human-like. The use of words such as “spills” and “makes gaps” convey an image of animate actions and create a vivid impression of the degradation of the wall. Nature, presented in the form of cold weather, frost and the activities of creatures, also seeks to destroy the wall. The idea that walls are unnatural and therefore nature abhors walls is portrayed in the phrase “makes gaps even two can pass abreast”, which metaphorically indicates that nature desires for man to walk side by side with no barrier between them. When the two meet to fix the wall, it is a metaphor that could be interpreted as the two repairing their friendship as “To each the boulders have fallen to each” which shows that faults in their relationship lie on behalf of them both. While they are mending the wall, a light-hearted tone is established. This is shown through the inclusion of the metaphor “spring is mischief in me” which shows the neighbours having fun together in repairing the wall,

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

In “Mending Wall”, Robert Frost made us aware that something doesn’t love the wall in the beginning of the poem, the wall that symbolizes boundary and obstacle between people. Although this restrictive wall gives protection and a feeling of safety for the people who are inside it, it also creates a huge barrier to the people who are on the outside. The only difference between a physical wall and an imaginary barrier is that a physical wall will eventually fall apart as time goes by, but the emotional one on the other hand will only get bigger. Does Frost agree with his neighbor on the perspective of relationship between people, or do they each hold a different idea?