The Mending Wall By Robert Frost Essay

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.

The use of conversation and the thoughts of the narrator reflect the poet's own thoughts. In line thirty to line thirty-five, the narrator questions the purpose of a wall. He has an open disposition and does not understand the need to “wall in” or “wall out” (line 33) anything or anyone.

Can a cow be anything more than a cow, or a wall actually be something other than a wall? Robert Frost, who lived from 1874 to 1963 and was considered one of America’s most eminent poets, demonstrated metaphors frequently within his poems. Readers of Frost’s poetry are often faced with the question, “What is Robert Frost really trying to say?” It is without a shadow of doubt that the American poet had the capability of taking his poetry and turning it into something preternatural, but not without the help of metaphors. Frost elaborated the meaning of metaphor as, “Saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another….” Several pieces of his work provides images such as a cow, a flower, country roads, and a wall that serve as metaphors for larger ideas.

“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.

The poet also used imagery to appeal to the senses. The puzzling force that abhors the wall "sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun."

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

Discoveries can be confronting and provocative as they can lead to new values and perspectives and change the way we think. The poems “Home burial” and “Mending wall” by Robert Frost and the novel “Will Grayson, Will Grayson” by John Green and David Levithan, relates to discovery by showing the character’s perspectives differently with language forms, such as first and third person, and techniques, such as simile and metaphors.

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.

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 the poem, “The Mending Wall” Frost creates a lot of ambiguity in order to leave the poem open for interpretation. Frost’s description of every detail in this poem is very interesting, it leaves the reader to decide for themselves what deductions they are to be making of the poem. To begin with, Frost makes literal implications about what the two men are doing. For instance, they are physically putting the stones back, one by one. Their commitment and constant drive shows how persistent these men seem about keeping the wall intact. On the other hand, there are inferences that something deeper is occurring.

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.