Robert Frost's Poem "Mending Wall"

Hello readers, I'm writing this blog as an assignment given by the Department of English, MKBU. Here, I've tried to define the poem of Robert Frost "Mending Wall".

Robert Frost:

Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California, U.S. and died on January 29, 1963 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was an American poet who was much admired for his depictions of the rural life of New England, his command of American colloquial speech, and his realistic verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations.

His Notable works:

“A Boy’s Will” 

“After Apple-Picking” 

“In the Clearing” 

“Mending Wall” 

“Mountain Interval” 

“New Hampshire” 

“North of Boston” 

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” 

“Storm Fear” 

“The Death of the Hired Man” 

“The Road Not Taken”

 

Mending Wall:

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.

Analysis of the poem:

"Mending Wall '' suggests a commonplace springtime task in New England, where low stone walls are the usual boundaries between property. Two country neighbors move along either side of a wall, repairing the destruction of the winter. The two farmers are very different in their approach to life. One is practical, conventional, and rather unimaginative. He is repairing the wall because he thinks that is the thing to do in the spring. His father and grand-father repaired walls every year in the spring, and he should continue without asking what he is walling in or walling out-or why he is building a wall at all. The other farmer is a fanciful fellow with a questioning mind and a friendly spirit. He approaches his job as if it had never been done before. The New England convention of repairing walls in spring is not very important to him. He is a trusting man and rather unconventional. He sees no reason for barriers where no barriers are needed. He knows that his apple trees will never get across and eat up his neighbor's pine cones. He has a sense of trust that makes material walls unnecessary. Before he builds a wall, he'd "ask to know" what he "was walling in or walling out" and to whom he "was like to give offense." But the more conventional man has no such peace of mind, no such questioning spirit. He will not go beyond his father's saying, and he likes having thought of it so well, he says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

This is the surface meaning of the poem, but if we look for something in broader scope, we know that the poem illustrates two points of view about life and human relationships. There are two kinds of walls between people. The imaginative and trusting neighbor is not without walls, but his are the spiritual walls of mutual self-respect. The cautious man, on the other hand, feels the need for real barriers, stone walls and doors that may be locked with keys. We all need to protect ourselves from intrusion by the use of certain spiritual walls which keep our quality of living, our philosophy of life. These walls within our own spirit are the fanciful walls that make us strong people, they are the best assurance of our own privacy; they encourage within us a decent respect for the privacy of other persons. These are the walls that keep a student from looking at another's paper during an examination. They are the walls that keep people honest and decent. These spiritual walls form the basis of a student's moral sense. Without them, no teacher, however watchful, can do very much about the problem of cheating. Sometimes people, like the cautious and conventional man in Robert Frost's poem, build unnecessary walls about themselves as well as about their property-walls that act as barriers between themselves and other people. These are the walls of needless estrangement; these are the walls that make men bitter, ingrown, and lonely and, more often than not, for no reason at all. These are the walls that can separate people who should be near and dear to each other.

Last spring we visited a beautiful old ante-bellum home in the deep South. A long avenue of oaks led up to the place, white and shady and mellowed behind its red japonica bushes. For a small fee we were allowed to enter the doors of the mansion and admire the warm mahogany and walnut and the beautifully gleaming silver and crystal that the old home contained. Two elderly sisters, the last of a fine old Southern family, kept the place and managed to live meagerly on the small subsistence they got from the people who came to see their lovely antiques. We were escorted through the gracious rooms and up the old winding staircase by Miss Maria, who carried hanging from her belt a gigantic, intricately-wrought old iron key. The doors of all the rooms were flung wide for us-all except one, which was securely locked. As Miss Maria approached the closed, white-paneled door of this particular room, she stopped a moment, looked rather embarrassed, then turned to us and con- fided, "This is my room. I have to keep the door locked. My sister snoops."

Now Miss Maria and Miss Lou had known what it was to have pride of family, genuine aristocracy, grace in social living. But in their adversity and old age, they did not know the pride that comes with happy daily living. And Miss Maria was unable to conceal from the world an unhappy and distrustful relationship between herself and her sister. The beautiful old iron key was only a symbol. We saw a lifetime of iron keys hanging from Miss Maria's belt, symbols of something in human relationships that cause misunderstanding and locked doors. Sometimes we can abuse spiritual walls and force people to protect themselves by hanging great keys from their belts.

The needlessly cautious person often builds walls to protect him- self from the unfamiliar and the unknown. He likes only the ways he has traveled before, only the signposts that are familiar and thoroughly understood. Last summer two little girls came from their farm in Iowa to visit in New York. Alice was twelve, and Dorothy was ten. This was their first trip to a great city; so we con- trived to give them the most exciting visit possible. Because they had never eaten foreign foods before, we took them to a Swedish restaurant for lunch one day, and we watched them as they walked around the lavish table of smorgasbord. Alice emerged with all the new and different foods that she could discover, exotic meats, strange kinds of raw fish, and unfamiliar pastes. But not Dorothy. She had chosen only those things that she had eaten at home, ham and potato salad, stuffed eggs and pickles. She had refused the unknown, the unfamiliar. Just as we can erect needless barriers between ourselves and those who are near to us, between ourselves and experiences that are un- familiar, so also can we be intolerant of ideas, beliefs, and ways of living that are not our own. Wordsworth, another poet with a gentle spirit toward mankind and a sort of spiritual father to Robert Frost, called this kind of wall "man's inhumanity to man." The true democrat is as gentle as these poets in his respect for another person, his rights, his property, his race, his beliefs.

At the close of the First World War, we refused to join the League of Nations. We thought we could live alone; we built around us a great national wall and fortified it with tariff barriers that brought only greater and greater estrangement from other na- tions. That was in 1919. Now, in this year 1943, when President Roosevelt can travel to North Africa and back in such a short time that we do not hear of it until after his return, there is no such thing as intelligent isolation. Global war has made our world a smaller place. If we win the peace as well as the war, there can be no locked doors, no stone walls between ourselves and our Allies. We must learn the ways of intelligent cooperation with other peoples who share our dreams of security and a better life. We must encourage understanding among peoples and find ways of working together. "Something there that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down."

Literary Devices:

Assonance: 

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line such as /e/ sound in 'To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen'.

Enjambment: 

Enjambment refers to the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet or stanza such as, 

'And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

Imagery: 

Imagery is used to make the readers perceive things with their five senses. Frost has used visual imagery in this poem such as, 'And some are loaves and some so nearly balls', 'He is all pine and I am apple orchard' and 'Not of woods only and the shade of trees.'

Consonance: 

Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as /n/ and /t/ sounds 'And set the wall between us once again'.

Symbolism: 

Symbolism is using symbols to signify ideas and qualities, giving them symbolic meanings different from their literal meanings. Similarly, 'fence' symbolizes 'gap that one should maintain to establish long-lasting relationships and to maintain privacy. 'Nature' symbolizes the reunion of the two as the speaker meets his neighbor every year in spring to fix the fence.

Metaphor: 

It is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between objects different in nature. There is only one metaphor used in the poem. It is used in the seventeenth line where it is stated as, 'And some are loaves and some so nearly balls.' He compares the stone blocks to loaves and balls. 

Structure of the poem:

The structure of Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" adheres to blank verse poetry. The end of its lines do not rhyme but it loosely follows the iambic pentameter metric scheme. The poem is composed of 45 lines and is not divided into stanzas. Frost does maintain iambic stresses, but he is flexible with the form in order to maintain the conversational feel of the poem. 

Word count: 1685