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The Interlopers And Mending Wall Literary Analysis

Decent Essays

A holiday, or tradition is usually looked upon as times of happiness and a way to gather with loved ones, but it isn't always that way. Traditions are a part of most people's lives, and is really never seen as a negative connotation. Yet, there is always another side to the story. In the two pieces, The Interlopers and Mending Wall, tradition can be seen embedded in between the lines. The Interlopers features two men whose families have hated one another for generations, all over a piece of land that really has no value. The men find themselves bleeding out pinned under a large tree branch, where they die to wolves. In Mending Wall, another set of two men walk along a wall rebuilding it, as it has fallen apart during the winter season, but …show more content…

This tradition was all they knew, and kept the two men apart for their whole lives. Before the wolves come, Ulrich(one of the men), asks Georg if he wants to finally be friends, and Georg replies “Ulrich von Gradwitz, I will be your friend.” This acquaintanceship had begun all in the hour or two they were together out of their many years. In the short amount of time where the weight of tradition wasn't on their shoulders, and no family was pressuring them, they were able to resolve their conflicts. Another point is the conflict that had started their tradition over a plot of forest that “was not remarkable for the game it harbored or the shooting it afforded.”

The author of the poem Mending Wall, Robert Frost, uses an extended metaphor to reveal the idea that tradition can cause social division. Mending Wall is a poem about two men who rebuild the stone wall that marks their property line, which is done once every year after winter has died down. The narrator has seen the wall as useless and there is truly no use for it, as his “apple trees will never get across / and eat the cones under his pines.” It is like the narrator has a pack of wolves and the other man sheep. Yet, the neighbor feels quite the opposite, he feels the wall is necessary. He says not once, but twice “Good fences make good neighbors.”

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