Robert Frost Response

Fences are normally built around a house to keep people out and can be used to keep people in. While fences are known to be literal there is also a metaphorical way to look at them. In the drama play, “Fences” by August Wilson; the fence is used in both a literal and metaphoric ways. Wilson shows us how fences are used to keep people in and out. The symbolism of fences are shown to be used in the life of Troy, the father and husband; Rose, the mother and wife of Troy; and lastly Cory, the son of Troy and Rose. While some fences are built to keep the world out; others are built to keep people in; family.

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.

And rather than give up and thus acknowledge the inexistence of his world, or the falseness of his story, he remains lucidly supportive of imagination, by integrating his neighbor into his fantasy as "an old-stone savage armed". This explains why the last line, curiously, is spoken by the neighbor, for the neighbor, now having been incorporated into the fantasy world, is able to take part in the poem, and its imagination. Yet, at least on this level, the story is left inconclusive, without a direct or open challenge from the speaker to the neighbor with regards to his outdated traditions, as both the speaker and the neighbor fail to communicate with one another. The speaker, ironically that is, creating a wall, through his imagination, that blocks out his neighbor, and the neighbor supporting a physical wall that leaves out his neighbor. Thus no wall is truly mended, as they all remain standing, and standing strong.

It is a little hard to understand from this excerpt of the poem but the main poem is about two neighbors who have a wall separating them and the wall is breaking apart. One man wants to take down the wall but the other thinks the wall should stay up like it had been when their fathers built it there. This poem deals with some minor decisions but still have to do with a decision that can affect a life.

Wall’s are blockages used to isolate a human beings wants and feelings. Privacy should be respected by all although offensiveness was not intended by either neighbor. The speaker’s logic was that the wall blocking the properties were absurd. The essential purpose of the poem is the desire by one neighbor to have a

“Mending Wall” written by Robert Frost seems to take place in a countryside estate. The speaker and his neighbor are fixing a wall together, which separates their properties. “Mending Wall” is a poem that describes the relationship between two neighbors and idea of maintaining barriers. This poem reflects how people make physical barriers and emotional barriers. A barrier is an object that keeps something in or the unwanted out. The speaker wants to know why these barriers are up. “If we make a psycho-analysis of the speaker through the present poem, we came to the conclusion that the neighbour is no one but the inner self of the speaker” (Srivastava 257). “This wall is nothing, but the gap between human-beings on various aspects culturally, economically, and socially” (Srivastava 257). The wall is a basis for the many differences that people in our society have. Throughout this poem, we see the speaker struggle to find a reason for having a wall that is separating him from the neighbor. The speaker is valuing innovation over tradition. Although, the speaker is also a man of tradition he is trying to rebel against the norms that frustrates him. The speaker does not want a relationship with his neighbor.

Emotional expression, interpersonal connections, depicting the world, and changing others’ perspective are the goals poets yearn to achieve with their work. Discovering this literary art proves itself quite different than any other passage of text. Poems have rhythm, voice, purpose, interaction, and tell wonders of this world. Robert Frost, a well known poet, accomplishes all this perfectly through his unique writing, and his numerous excellent poems exist as a result.

Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” tells the story of two neighbors who come together yearly to mend the stone wall which divides their property. One neighbor, the narrator, is skeptical of this tradition. He does not understand the need for a wall since neither neighbor has livestock to be contained on their property. However, his neighbor maintains that the wall is crucial to maintaining their relationship claiming that “good fences make good neighbors.” Throughout the poem, the narrator attempts to convince his neighbor otherwise, yet no matter what he says, the neighbor always maintains that “good fences make good neighbors.” The narrator sees the wall as pointless, not seeing a need for the division. Despite his skepticism and criticism towards this tradition, the narrator appears to be more tied to this tradition than his neighbor.

He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.” (Frost 27). What good neighbor says that? What makes that statement true? This ironic statement grabs the attention of many young readers. In (Mending Wall) by Robert Frost, two neighbors, every spring must go to the stone wall that separates them from each other. (The Interlopers) by Saki is about two rivals for decades who get trapped together, and then something remarkable and ironic happens, that changes what they think about each other. Frost writes how the two neighbors are building the wall back up and the narrator wonders why they have a wall anyway. Saki writes how years of hatred towards each other dissolves. Saki and Frost uses irony and characterization to convey a theme of relationships because relationships can change between two people, but only if both ends wants to change it.

In Frost', "Mending Wall" the key difference between the narrator and his neighbor is that the narrator thinks it's unnecessary to have bounderies or barriers in order to be a good neighbor. The neighbor thinks it is because it may help avoid conflict. The neighbor resists change because that has been what worked for him all these years. The narrator seeks change because he feels as though it's unfriendly and outdated. I don't think their conflict can be resolved because the neighbor seems to be rooted in his ways. According to the neighbor, a "good neighbor" is one who can be a better neighbor if bounderies are drawn to avoid conflict over property. My view would be that of the narrator, as adults we should be able to communicate about our

Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” is a poem that was written without proper form and has no stanzas/rhyme to it; this was done purposely by the author to make the writing sound more conversational and look more like a common story that a reader can simply apply to his/her own life circumstances. The poem presents readers with two neighbors and their efforts at reconstructing a stone wall separating their property every year. Frost uses metaphoric symbolism in this poem as the wall is used as a metaphor to portray the idea of a barrier between people and the repairing of the wall as resolving obstacles and bringing people together. Every spring, two very different men come together to rebuild a wall destroyed by nature and hunters; however, the speaker begins to think, what is the purpose of this wall if we have no animals to keep away? Why do we rebuild a wall every year that not even nature wants? The poem begins to compare two lifestyles: traditional and logical. While the neighbor truly believes “good fences make good neighbors”, the speaker argues that respect and kindness do rather than a useless wall.

The “Mending Wall,” by Robert Frost, describes a story about two men who come together each spring to walk alongside the wall that separates their farms. When someone builds a wall, they are separating themselves from something or someone and keeping something or someone at a distance. In “Mending Wall,” the narrator of the poem is an outgoing, open-minded person. His neighbor, however, is quite the opposite of him. He is quiet, only comes out once a year in the spring, and sticks to what he knows. While they walk along the wall, they fix the breaks in the wall that the hunters and the winter have made during the past year.

Robert Frost`s poem “The Mending Wall” was first “published in 1914 by David Nutt in North of Boston” (Modern American Poetry). This poem is narrated by a New England farmer, who does not want to build a wall between the two farms. Some scholars may see this term “Wall” as a boundary line between two countries. Others can argue that this is an allegory, which depicts how neighbors as well are in the human sense, must care for and try to understand one another in spite the differences. I will argue, however, that Frost has created a wall that shows the epitome of his own bound heart which continuously yearning to set free himself from all the attachments of old rituals, which have stuck in his mind. He has used two characters in the poem to show his criticism and attachments, one of them a New England farmer, which represents his heart, and the other is his neighbor, who acts similar to his brain. I will accomplish this by a close reading of two key points that demonstrate this in the poem- the criticism towards the wall, appeal to stop to mend the wall for the freedom of peace of mind and with a biographical analysis of Frost`s life on the pyramid of Maslow’s Hierarchy.