Discussion Topic

Analysis of Lines, Sections, and Speaker in "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost

Summary:

In Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," the speaker is a practical and humorous individual who questions the necessity of maintaining a wall between his and his neighbor's property. He represents a modern, free-thinking perspective, contrasting with his traditional neighbor who insists that "good fences make good neighbors." The poem explores themes of tradition versus change, symbolized by the wall, and the different approaches to neighborly relations. The repeated lines "something there is that doesn’t love a wall" and "good fences make good neighbors" underscore the central tension between the speaker's questioning nature and the neighbor's adherence to tradition.

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How would you characterize the speaker in Robert Frost's "The Mending Wall"?

In "The Mending Wall," the speaker is a practical man who sees himself as more modern, free thinking, and rational than his traditional neighbor. The speaker is irritated about having to the repair the stone wall between two properties, but he has a sense of humor about it. He is also thoughtful and caring enough to participate in the ritual for the sake of his neighbor.

The spring weather bringing out his mischievous sense of humor, the speaker questions the practicality of fixing the wall:

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors?

This is a challenge to his neighbor's sense of tradition: the speaker notes to himself that neither of them have livestock that could wander onto the other's property and do damage, so he fantasizes about letting the wall disappear. He likens his neighbor to an "old-stone savage." He sees the neighbor as living in "darkness" because he is unable to question the tradition that good fences makes good neighbors.

But while the speaker is irritated because he finds this task a waste of time, he also approaches it with a sense of humor. He says that he and his neighbor "use a spell" to make the stones balance and stay in place. He wants to tease his neighbor by blaming the disrepair of the wall on elves.

Finally, what shines through about the speaker's character is his good nature. He goes along with this ritual for the sake of his neighbor. He could easily put himself first and say, "I am not wasting my time on this," but he knows that would upset his companion. Instead, he does his part, and perhaps understands on some deeper level that it is this bonding through shared labor that makes good neighbors more than having an intact wall.

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How would you characterize the speaker in Robert Frost's "The Mending Wall"?

The speaker of a poem is referred to as the persona.  Although as readers we often imagine a poem to be narrated by the author himself, that is not always the case.  In The Mending Wall, Robert Frost has created a character--a persona separate from himself--to narrate.

We have here an English country landowner facing the sorry spring task of replacing all the fallen parts of his stone fence, so he is not in the most cheerful of moods.  Yet he is not one to overtly complain about things, and clearly he is a hard worker, since he is out there doing it, despite his belief that the fence is unnecessary.  In fact, it seems that the only reason he comes out each spring to repair it is at the wish of his neighbor, who keeps pace with his repairs on the opposite side because he believes that “‘Good fences make good neighbors.’”

Rather, our narrator is logically questioning the why of it.  He is open-minded to changing the tradition of keeping a fence between their two properties. The neighbor, however, holds to the tradition of his father, and simply repeats his favorite quote.  In a snarky moment our narrator thinks, “My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines,” plus they have no cows to keep in. He determines that if he was ever going to build a fence, first “I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out, / And to whom I was like to give offense.” So to some extent, our man is a bit offended by the wall.

Yet he also has a sense of humor about it all, rather than being bitterly angry. As he watches his neighbor on the other side, struggling with two handfuls of stone in the semi-darkness (presumably they have been repairing the fence all day), he likens him to a savage-looking caveman, “Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top / In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.”  In the end the narrator is unable to convince his neighbor that the wall should be allowed to crumble, but the rebel in him still believes  “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” He’s a persona we can all relate to for his willingness to question tradition through logic and humor.

And truth be told, this persona might not be so different from Frost himself, after all.  Before he became a lucrative writer, he was a farmer for eleven years in Derry, New Hampshire. The 30-acre farm is said to have had a stone fence, as well. I can imagine a young Robert Frost, trudging through the mud with stones, composing poetry in his head.  

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Which lines are repeatedly mentioned in the poem "Mending Wall"?

The lines “something there is that doesn’t love a wall” and “good fences make good neighbors” are repeated.

Repetition is used in poems to add emphasis and highlight significant themes.  In this case, the poem is about a pair of neighbors who disagree on whether there should be a wall between their farms.  One thinks that it is better to keep your neighbor at a distance, and the other does not see the point of the wall and prefers more contact between neighbors.

The first and last lines of the poem are parts of the repetition.  Each of these are related to the main theme of the poem, which is that we put up walls against other people because we feel that we are better off keeping others at a distance.

The speaker does not like maintaining the wall between the two farms.  He feels that it is unnecessary, using the fact that the wall seems to crumble as proof that it should not be there.

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.

The neighbor, on the other hand, carefully reconstructs the wall each year.  The speaker wants to be a good neighbor by getting to know his neighbor, but the neighbor wants to be a good neighbor by avoiding his neighbor.  It is two different approaches to the act of coexisting with others.

The neighbor has a policy that seems to support keeping the wall intact.

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.'

The two positions seem to have no middle ground.  The speaker feels that since neither of them have livestock, there is no reason to have a wall.  The neighbor prefers tradition.  He likes to keep himself isolated from his neighbors.

It should be noted that both neighbors work to rebuild the wall.  This is a metaphor too.  Although the speaker's neighbor prefers the wall, keeping it there is a collaboration between the two of them.  When others shut us out, we need to cooperate in order for them to really keep us out.

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Who is the speaker of "Mending Wall?"

The speaker of this poem is a man who questions the importance of the walls we put up- both physical and emotional. He starts the poem with the contemplation, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Here, he is referring to the tendency of some kind of force of nature that causes the “frozen-ground” to “swell” (2) and damage a wall, creating gaps in it. It seems that if this “something” is so determined to know the wall down, then maybe they are made to be torn down. At the same time, maybe the emotional walls people put up are meant to be torn down as well. The poem turns into a narrative of a time that the speaker and his neighbor work to repair the gaps created by “something.” All the while, the speaker wonders why they even need a wall if all they have to worry about crossing into each other's property are their pine and apple trees (24-25). The neighbor’s response is that “‘good fences make good neighbors (26)’” presumably because they help to keep people out of each other’s business. This bothers the speaker because he wants the neighbor to at least think about why walls are necessary, but the speaker only repeats himself, solidifying his desire to keep a wall between himself and the speaker and, thus, maintain the emotional barrier between the two.

As the enotes guide (linked below) discusses, it can be said that the author of the poem, Robert Frost, is the speaker because they have many similarities, but more likely Frost and the speaker are two separate entities as Frost seems to be poking fun at or criticizing the speaker for being unable to see problems in his own thinking, namely, that he is just as bad as the neighbor about putting up walls and shouldn't be so quick to judge.

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What are the characteristics of the speaker and the neighbor in "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost?

The speaker in the poem is a thoughtful man, hard-working, practical, and discerning.  As he works with his neighbour to repair the wall dividing their property, he questions the necessity of even having a wall in certain places, noting, "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" (lines 23-26).  The speaker likes to examine issues and evaluate whether he is doing things for good reasons.  He is free-thinking, and would prefer not to have a wall at all, because "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 offence.  Something there is that doesn't love a wall" (lines 33-36).

The neighbour, on the other hand, sees no reason to even discuss the situation, repeating, "Good fences make good neighbors" (lines 27 and 46).  He is uncommunicative, and the speaker feels he is rigid and unwilling to look at things in new ways.  The neighbour hides behind old sayings, and the speaker labels him "an old stone savage" who "moves in darkness" (lines 41-42).  The neighbor is the type of man who blocks other people and possibilities out of his life, both figuratively and concretely.

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Analyse lines 27 - 34 of "Mending Wall" and relate them to the poem's overall meaning.

What is important to realise about so much of Frost's poetry is that everything functions symbolically as well as literally. Here, in this poem, what seems to be a slight disagreement or misunderstanding about building up walls to separate the land of two neighbours clearly stands for something much bigger and can be related to a universal condition of humanity. Let us consider the lines that your question relates to:

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? 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.

Clearly we have two opposite views regarding walls juxtaposed here. The view of the neighbour, repeated twice in the poem, is that "Good fences make good neighbours," or, to put it another way, being clear of where we stand and what separates us from others is the way to ensure good relationships. However, the speaker of this poem asks why it is that humans need to create walls to separate themselves, and makes the point that every time you build a wall you wall certain things in and certain things out, which, in turn will cause offence to various groups of people. This section of the poem, therefore, and the poem as a whole, asks severe questions about the barriers that we construct that separate us from each other, and also makes us think about whether such barriers cause more harm than they do good.

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Explain lines 11 to 15 of "The Mending Wall".

Aren't you referring to "Mending Wall,"the poem by Robert Frost?

Frost expresses in these lines the "necessity" for barriers in spite of good will and even friendship.  The fact that the two neighbours help each other maintain the wall  between their properties graphically demonstrates this. Frost wonders why his proximity to his neighbour should be a potential menace of intrusion. Wouldn't they still be good neighbours if the wall were not there? Perhaps the answer is "Yes," but the wall concretizes their separation, their need for privacy and even exclusion. Rebuilding the wall together ironically honours this unspoken code of conduct. The age-old adage is indeed well put: 'Your liberty stops where another person's begins.'

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Who repairs the wall in Robert Frost's "Mending Wall"?

The stone wall in question divides two farm properties. In the winter, the wall suffers damage due to weather and hunters. Stones roll away or fall, and gaps appear in the wall.

So, the two property owners meet to repair the wall together. This is only fair, because the wall belongs to both of them. However, as the poem shows, these two men have very different outlooks on life, despite being neighbors.

The speaker thinks for himself and takes a fanciful, imaginative, questioning view of life. He wants to fancy, for instance, that elves rolled the rocks from the wall. At certain points in the poem, he questions whether the wall even needs to be repaired. As he puts it,

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.
However, the neighbor responds that "good fences make good neighbors."
The speaker persists in questioning why they need a wall between them. Neither of them has cows that wander off, and, as the speaker further states,
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.
However, the neighbor is a traditional thinker who learned the phrase "good fences make good neighbors" from his father, and he insists on repeating it. He doesn't want to think about why he does things or if they could be done a better way. He doesn't consider that it might be a waste of time to repair the entire wall. But, depending on your interpretation, his final word may be the right one: maybe it is better that these two very different men keep a "fence" between them.
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Who is the speaker in Robert Frost's "The Mending Wall"?

One approach to the interpretation of this long narrative poem by one of America's greatest poets is to read it as a metaphoric wall between political philosophies. With the speaker of the poem as the Liberal, so confident in his attitudes that are "progressive" and popular among so many, he approaches the mending of the wall with a light-heart, delighting in the Spring that brings him and his neighbor together. So self-confident is he that the repair of the stone wall is approached by him as "a kind of outdoor game"; he playfully works on his side replacing rocks, humorously telling them, "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!" But, when his neighbor--in the speaker's mind--unimaginatively recites his conservative belief that "Good fences make good neighbors," the speaker questions him, "Why do they make good neighbors?" and seeks to sway him to his way of thinking. But, when the neighbor refuses, the good temper of the speaker changes, and he calls his neighbor "an old-stone savage armed," perceiving him backward in his thinking without exerting any effort to understand him.

Juan Williams, formerly of PBS, who was fired because "I was not liberal enough," remarked that the "Liberal Orthodoxy will punish you if you disagree." Indeed, such seems to be the case here with the speaker, who disdains his neighbor for being entrenched in his conservative belief in the importance of boundaries, when he himself refuses to alter his maxim, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" as he repeats, too, in line 35.

Certainly, then, the broader theme revolves around the fact that often people are so entrenched in their own beliefs that they refuse to  consider those of others as viable, and they resent in them the intolerance of which they themselves are guilty. Another theme is that people often adhere to tradition for no other reason than that it is simply that, tradition, a ritual they have blindly followed for generations that to them possesses worth since it has been around so long:

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."

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Can you explain the meaning of "Mending Wall" in sections of five lines?

Lines 1-5 of the Frost poem is talking about the nature of the wall as natural forces work on it. The affect of the winter forces changes in the ground that alter the nature of the wall. Lines 6-10 addresses the unnatural intrusion of man, who in his quest, will tear down the literal wall in order to more easily capture his prey. Lines 11-25 are still talking about a literal wall, as the two neighbors put the structure back to rights, but it is here where the metaphorical wall is introduced. It would seem natural two talk as the two neighbors go about repairing the wall, but when the one mentions that the pines and apples will never cross the barrier of the wall, the other’s taciturn reply is “Good fences make good neighbors.”  Lines 26-30 shows the orchard owner’s reluctance to continue accepting the status quo, and yet rather than voice his thoughts he would like to “put a notion” in the other’s head. The orchard owner then continues ponder this situation by considering what the wall might be keeping out or fencing in. The silliness is highlighted with his exclamation, albeit only in his own mind, of “Elves.” The poem concludes by indicating that nothing will change as the pine tree owner will not go against his upbringing and reiterates “Good fences make good neighbors.”

The following is a link to a great study guide of this poem.

http://www.enotes.com/mending-wall-salem/mending-wall

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