In Robert Frost's “Mending Wall,” we are told that something does not like the wall that marks the boundary of the speaker's property and his neighbor's land. Something is always trying to topple the wall; the speaker and the neighbor are always mending it, but they have very different ideas about how to do so. Let's look at those ideas more closely so that you can decide which opposing view Frost favors.

The neighbor firmly maintains the conventional wisdom of “Good fences make good neighbors.” He insists upon mending the wall every time it needs it, even though the wall actually keeps no one out of his property and nothing inside. The neighbor's property is all pine trees, after all, and the speaker has an apple orchard.

The speaker recognizes the uselessness of the wall. Mending it is something of a game for him and his neighbor, a game that roughens up their hands. He would like to ask his neighbor why “Good fences make good neighbors,” for there are not even any cows to keep on one side of the wall or the other. The speaker notes that if he were going to build a wall, he would want to know what he “was walling in or walling out” and “to whom I was like to give offense.” Something does not like this wall, he maintains, and wants it down. Yet his neighbor wants it up, so they keep on mending it every year.

Now ask yourself which man the poet seems to agree with here. Does the neighbor make a better case with his conventional wisdom? Or does the speaker present a more practical view?

In "Mending Wall," what is the narrator's view on the wall? What about the neighbor?

The narrator thinks it is a completely unnecessary tradition to get together with his neighbor every spring and mend the stone wall that divides their two properties. As the narrator notes, neither of them has livestock that can wander over to the other person's property and do damage. The narrator has apple orchards, and the neighbor grows pine trees:

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.

In "Mending Wall," what is the narrator's view on the wall? What about the neighbor?

“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost describes the annual spring ritual in which the speaker and his neighbor work together to rebuild any portions of the fence separating their properties that were damaged during the winter months.

When the speaker mentions to his neighbor that they don’t need the wall at a certain point, the neighbor replied, “Good fences make good neighbors.” This shows that the neighbor believes it’s important to have a physical boundary that separates him from the outside world.

The speaker, on the other hand, remarks that he thinks it’s important to consider what one is “walling in or walling out.” This shows that the speaker perhaps thinks the wall is unnecessary since neither man owns livestock that could graze across the property line. He thinks the neighbor’s attachment to the wall represents a psychological barrier rather than the actual need for physical separation.