Robert Frost 's Mending Wall

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 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.

“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost, the fifty-six line lyric poem gives off a sarcastic tone that expresses impatience with his neighbor and the “wall.” The poem focuses on a theme of separation, the necessity of boundaries and the illusory arguments used to annihilate them.

In “Mending Wall”, two neighbors are ironically united by the traditional rebuilding of the wall between them. A wall symbolizes boundaries, orders, and separation. Or does it? One of the two neighbors doesn’t seem to think so. “Good fences make good neighbors” is his motto. (Line 26) The neighbor doesn’t see how ironic it is that the wall is a meeting spot. He uses the wall as an excuse to talk with his neighbor, because he is not very open or conversational. The situational irony ostended by Robert Frost is that the wall between the two clashing neighbors is supposed to separate them. However, each year, when they meet to “walk the line”, the wall serves as a meeting spot for the two to catch up. (Line 12) Dividing, but unifying, Frost uses the wall to symbolize unity amongst clashing people. Without the situational irony of repairing the wall, the two incompatible neighbors would unlikely be able to unite.

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.

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

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

Robert Frost’s poetic techniques serve as his own “momentary stay against confusion,” or as a buffer against mortality and meaninglessness in several different ways; in the next few examples, I intend to prove this. Firstly, however, a little information about Robert Frost and his works must be provided in order to understand some references and information given.

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

     However there is also a separation or segregation. In addition to the separation of the two men, Frost contrasts his “wall” of separation with the idea of segregation in our society. He uses this “wall” to display a separation between people in the current social climate. Lastly, there is the recurring idea that the wall should not be there. “We do not need the wall” This sentence implies that the wall separating us as people, needs to

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.