Analysis of Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Furthermore "that sends the frozen-ground-swell under it" refers to Frost or to the author. Although the narrator does not want the wall, ironically, the mending of the wall brings the neighbors together and literally builds their friendship. An additional irony of the poem is that the only time these two neighbors sees each other is when they both mend the wall. The narrator sees the stubbornness in his neighbor, and uses the simile 'like an old-stone savage' to compare him to a stone-age man who 'moves in darkness', that is, set in his ways, and who is unlikely to change his views.

“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost, the fifty-six line lyric poem gives off a sarcastic tone that expresses impatience with his neighbor and the “wall.” The poem focuses on a theme of separation, the necessity of boundaries and the illusory arguments used to annihilate them. Frost uses the phrase “Mending Wall” to show that the relationship between the narrator and the neighbor is not being repaired. The poem focuses on two men who meet amongst a wall to stroll and make repairs. The narrator feels that the wall shouldn’t be there. He states that, “...We do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard, my apples will never get across.

However simple the poem seems, it serves as a complex argument between the two competing schools of thought. Nature sends Frost signals that the wall is useless, but his neighbor fails to understand. He just blindly follows the words of his father. His neighbor is characterized as being the opposite of Frost and is what reminds him that a purely romantic perception of the world is not entirely accurate. Frost, on the other hand, personified romanticism and contrasts the two.

The man is too ashamed that he is contemplating suicide to look God in the face, but still, he does not change his attitude, hence his unwillingness to explain. The theme of isolation becomes apparent through the loneliness of the city. The phrases "saddest... ... middle of paper ... ...be the symbolic wish that he has miles to go in life before he can rest in the snowy woods. In these two poems, Frost does a wonderful job of making it seem, at first glance, like wonderfully simple poems, but after taking a deeper look, one can see the deeper and darker meanings of the poems. Although these poems both deal with the gloomy, unhappy theme of suicide, Frost always leaves the character with hope and life.

The speaker makes a clever comment about how his apple orchards cannot get across and mess with the cones under his pine trees. The neighbor only responds with, “Good fences make good neighbors (Frost 232).” That exact quote is symbolic of not only the fact that having a wall to separate the apple orchards and pine tree prevents any future conflicts between the neighbors but the same could be said in life. The speaker, for the duration of the poem, contemplates the words of his neighbor. As if to lead the reader to draw their own conclusion on 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 ... ... middle of paper ... ...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’.

Through this poem, Frost could be saying that even though the idea of a wall that serves no purpose seems silly to the speaker, at least some barriers are important in everyone’s lives. We also see th... ... middle of paper ... ...s and feel the “easy wind”. In “Mending Wall” we can see the “boulders in the sun” and hear the “yelping dogs”. Overall, his writing process involved using different poetic forms and combining them in various ways to create his own, very distinct form. By using these traditional characteristics but tearing them apart and rearranging them in his own way, one could even say that he was both building and destroying his own wall, creating his own barrier by choosing which rules to break and which ones to follow.

Symbolism is another important poetic device that is used throughout this poem. One’s entire understanding of the poem relies upon their understanding of the symbols applied. Bob Dylan uses symbolism on numerous occasions throughout his song “ Every Grain of Sand”. In the line “ When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed,”(1. 2) Dylan uses the flooding of the newborn seed to represent how the tears ... ... middle of paper ... ...f Sand” create a feeling of searching for something, especially at the beginning.

As much as the speaker despises the wall he comes back year after year because he craves dialogue and social interactions. Frost uses personification when he says "My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines" (25-26) comparing the speaker to the apple trees to suggest that if they took down the wall the neighbor wouldn 't get bothered by him. But as these two walk along the wall while it almost just becomes a game with no deeper purpose and they rebuild it in

The separation between the two men is apparent, both physically and mentally. Even when the neighbor comes from "beyond the hill" on the fence mending day, he remains far away. The narrator describes how his neighbor seems to "move in darkness ... not of woods only and the shade of trees". The darkness hanging over him is his inability to communicate and relate with others. He is unwilling to "go behind his father's saying, and he likes having thought of it so well He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'"