"Mending Wall" by Robert Frost focuses on two neighbors who meet to make repairs on a stone wall that separates their two homes. The poem's speaker sees no point in maintaining the wall, since neither of the neighbors has any cows or other livestock to confine to their property. The speaker questions the neighbor about this, but the neighbor only repeats the saying, "Good fences make good neighbors."
The speaker
in the poem is a progressive individual who starts to question the need for
such a wall in the first place. The neighbor beyond the hill is a
traditionalist and has, it seems, little time for such nonsense.
'Good
fences make good neighbors,' is all he will say.
We all have
neighbors, we all know that walls eventually need repairing. Walls separate and
keep people apart, walls deny right of passage and yet provide security.
Despite the need for such a barrier, the opening line - Something there
is that doesn't love a wall, - implies that the idea of a wall isn't
that straightforward.
Robert
Frost, in his own inimitable way, invites the reader into controversy by
introducing mischief into the poem. The speaker wants to put a notion into the
head of his neighbor, to ask him to explain why is it good walls make good
neighbors, but in the end says nothing.
A wall may
seem useful in the countryside as it could help keep livestock safe and secure
and mark a definite boundary. But a wall that separates village from village,
city from city, country from country, people from people, family from family -
that's a completely different scenario.
Robert
Frost's poem can help pinpoint such issues and bring them out into the open.
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