Both Mending wall and Digging deal with an Aspect of Work in the Countryside. Compare and Contrast the poets’ feelings and attitudes to their subjects
The two poems ‘Mending Wall’ by Robert Frost and ‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney were both written before violent incidents. ‘Mending Wall’ was published just before the First World War, where there was a huge amount of tension between countries and boundaries. ‘Digging’ was written before the Troubles, and this could have caused Heaney to write about history and stereotypes that have come around over the years. This has allowed him to break the family tradition and yet has managed to find a link with poetry and the farm labour.
Both of poems include actions of farm labour in the countryside. In ‘Mending Wall’, Frost has chosen to have an argument for and against the idea of boundaries, whereas Heaney has decided to ‘dig’ into his past for the answers to his questions.
During ‘Mending Wall’, the poet is starting to question this choice of rebuilding the ‘wall’. He is not happy at the end of the poem as the neighbour can only answer ‘Good fences make good neighbours’ and Frost feels that this argument is inadequate. However, on reading ‘Digging’, Heaney has informed the reader that he does not want to follow in his father’s footsteps, but wants advantage of the new ‘free education ‘available, which allowed him to become a poet.
Nowadays, tradition is still highly relevant, but there are still individuals who ‘strike out’ and ‘go against the trend’ of following the expected way of life that his father had done previously before him.
In both poems, there is a clear difference in poetic style and structure of the poems. In ‘Mending Wall’, there is only one long stanza, where the ...
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...en written just before a conflict in society, and so there are links which return to the context of each poem such as ‘snug as a gun’ and ‘walk the line’, which could show that they are patrolling their territory in ‘Mending Wall’. There may also be a conflict between the two neighbours, as they both have different opinions of each other.
I feel that both poets have been successful in different ways. Robert Frost has used a wide range of vocabulary and some clear devices to keep his work interesting for the reader. However, Heaney seems to have recalled a pervious life experience and added clear language aspects such as imagery, alliteration and repetition. In ‘Mending Wall’, the key idea is that there is no need for a wall but in ‘Digging’, the key concept is that the poet does not want to follow his father’s tradition of digging turf on ‘Toner’s bog’.
The persona in the poem reacts to the power the wall has and realizes that he must face his past and everything related to it, especially Vietnam.
Both authors explore the progressive attitudes and how these were received during the time period of both Fitzgerald and Robert. Frost presents this idea in the poem, ‘Mending Wall’. The poem is about two neighbours who every year go to the end of the garden to meet and build a wall together. However, one neighbour is confused as why there needs to be a wall as there is nothing that needs to be divided or prevented from escaping or entering. This neighbour begins to challenge the other neighbour, ‘why do they make good neighbours?’
When reading the name of the poem "Digging", it seems like it will be about nothing at all. Digging is a basic and ordinary activity and the reader does not expect anything meaningful when reading the poem. This is deceptive, because the first two lines present readers with a sense of choice. Heaney immediately makes them aware of the deeper issue of the subject he is about to explore and therefore creates an alertness in them.
Heaney’s poem, “Digging” showed that while the boy still loved his father, he did not wish to carry on the tradition of potato digging that had been in his family for generations. For example, Heaney wrote that he had “no spade to follow men like them”(Spence par 1). This quote states that Heaney, although loving his father, did not think he could carry on the tradition. Heaney remembers the way he would bring his grandfather a glass of milk, and would drink the entire bottle, and then would watch his grandfather fall to work once again. This brings about the fact that while still caring a great deal for his father and grandfather, he still would prefer the path of a writer (Glover 542). Ultimately, Heaney chose not to “follow men like them”, and chose instead on becoming a writer. This is backed up later in the poem when Heaney writes “Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests/I’ll dig with it.” Heaney had always watched his father from the upstairs window while he dug, and Heaney would watch and write, and this fanned the fire for Heaney’s desire to become a writer (Pellegrio pa...
Mending Wall written by Robert Frost, describes the relationship between two neighbors and idea of maintaining barriers. Where one of them feels that there is no need of this wall, 'There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard.' On the other hand his neighbor remains unconvinced and follows inherited wisdom passed down to him by his father, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' They even kept the wall while mending it, this reflect that they never interact with each other, ?We keep the wall between us as we go?. Robert Frost has maintained this literal meaning of physical barriers but it does contain metaphor as representation of these physical barriers separating the neighbors and also their friendship.
middle of paper ... ... Ultimately, we have two poems which can be compared on the grounds of their subject, but are poles apart regarding their message. The structure of these poems is not what would be typically expected from a war poem, but are structured on the basis of these typical structures in order to create some sense of familiarity.
In Seamus Heaney’s poetry, there is a recurring theme of his talking of the past, and more predominantly about significant moments in time, where he came to realisations that brought him to adulthood. In “Death of a Naturalist” Heaney describes a moment in his childhood where he learnt that nature was not as beautiful as seem to be when he was just a naive child. Heaney does this on a deeper level in “Midterm Break” describes his experience of his younger brothers funeral and the mixed, confusing feelings he encountered, consequently learning that he no longer was a child, and had no choice but to be exposed to reality. Robert Frost in one sense also describes particular moments in time, where his narrator comes to realisations. However, Frost writes more indirectly than Heaney, and all together more metaphorically. In “A Leaf Treader” he symbolically talks about life and death through the autumn season. He does the same, in “The Road Not Taken” where the two roads are described to be a metaphor for the decisions one makes in life, and the inevitable regrets we face due to those decisions. In “Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening” Frost directly talks directly of a moment in time, however the significant meaning being that in life one needs a moment of solace to appreciate peace and beauty.
The conflict in "Mending Wall" develops as the speaker reveals more and more of himself while portraying a native Yankee and responding to the regional spirit he embodies. The opposition between observer and observed--and the tension produced by the observer's awareness of the difference--is crucial to the poem. Ultimately, the very knowledge of this opposition becomes itself a kind of barrier behind which the persona, for all his dislike of walls, finds himself confined.
When building walls, or choosing not to, personal experiences and knowledge should always be taken into consideration. In order to decipher when it’s appropriate to put up walls and when it is not, we must give ourselves time to not only think but to absorb what has occurred. Walls are put up for all different types of reasons. In some cases, they are necessary and in others, they tend to not make much sense. In Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” the wall built between the two properties makes complete sense to the neighbor, but to the narrator it is unreasonable and hard to decipher.
The poem “Mending Wall” begins by the narrator telling is that there is a wall that is constantly being taken down by nature, and the narrator and his neighbor have to keep re-building it. But as the poem progresses, the narrator becomes unsure with himself, and begins to say that there is a wall “There where it is we do not need the wall” (23). He starts to question why a wall is there, knowing that he can never get across it to his neighbor. As the poem keeps progressing, he learns that the wall is there because of his neighbors tradition from his father, and he ends up saying “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall that wants it down (35), and he is talking about himself. In the progression of this poem, we see the narrator’s character change from someone who is persistent to someone who has hatred for what he is doing. He becomes more aware, having an epiphany, learning that there is truly no need for a wall, and it is only there because his neighbor is following his father’s tradition that requires him to keep the wall up. Through this characterization, we see that by only one side having hatred for the other, it can cause a division between them, because one person disagrees with the other. Through this poem, we see many character changes amongst the narrator, but one character that stays the same
Seamus Heaney was born in Derry, Northern Ireland. Derry was a bitterly divided city that soon became to the fore of "the troubles". In the 1970’s Northern Ireland's sectarian divisions hit a new level of extreme and t “the troubles” became violent and dangerous in the early 1970’s. With the change of situation in the North there also came a change in Heaney's writing. His poems seemed to grow more sociological and political as he delved into the troubled psychology of his homelands problems. In 1972 Heaney published "Wintering Out,", this collection is momentous in the works of Heaney as in this we see many references to the troubles. In 1975 still in the midst of the problems Heaney published "North," which was a much more indept analysis on the conflict. Both these publishcations will be examined as part of this essay to look at “theamatic of violence of Heaney’s work in early and later years. We see violence cut across Heaney's pastoral passions and makes him speak out as a citizen of Northern Ireland. Very similar to the First World War poets, who were torn from between an oblivious life and the fields of hell, Heaney's chose to speak out for the citizens affected by the horrors of the troubles.
In his poem 'Mending Wall', Robert Frost presents to us the ideas of barriers between people, communication, friendship and the sense of security people gain from barriers. His messages are conveyed using poetic techniques such as imagery, structure and humour, revealing a complex side of the poem as well as achieving an overall light-hearted effect. Robert Frost has cleverly intertwined both a literal and metaphoric meaning into the poem, using the mending of a tangible wall as a symbolic representation of the barriers that separate the neighbours in their friendship.
"Mending Wall" is a poem written by the poet Robert Frost. The poem describes two neighbors who repair a fence between their estates. It is, however, obvious that this situation is a metaphor for the relationship between two people. The wall is the manifestation of the emotional barricade that separates them. In this situation the "I" voice wants to tear down this barricade while his "neighbor" wants to keep it.
When a wall is encountered literally and physically, there are many different ways in which a person can react to the situation. One group of people would generally just find a way over or around the obstacle. While some other people might pursue a way directly through the wall. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but they both exist as outcomes to the same dilemma. The basic wall has been around with humans for as long as the discovery of masonry has been around. Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall is one such example of how a wall can have conflicting properties of human interaction. The neighbor in the poem says that “fences make good neighbors” and that the two neighbors involved with the wall rebuild it each spring and they enjoy fixing the wall with each other. The poem just helps illustrate that walls are an important factor in human activities. Walls are not limited to any specific culture or region and still they continue to be built over time.
The everyday objects present in his poems provide the reader an alternative perspective of the world. Robert Frost uses all the elements of poetry to describe the darker side of nature. After analyzing the Poem Mending Wall and After Apple Picking it is clear that nature plays a dark and destructive role for Robert Frost. This dark side of Frost’s poetry could have been inspired from the hard life he lived.