Mending Wall Analysis

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Misara Omar
Honors American Literature 10
Mr. Bakken
September 29, 2014
Hour 3

Commentary on "Mending Wall"

Have you ever caught yourself doing something you believed had no purpose in your life? In the poem "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost, a man is faced with the same problem. After having spent years mending a wall, he begins to question the purpose this wall might have in his society. Frost wants the readers to stop blindly following traditions and instead to look for the deeper meaning they might have. Frost demonstrates this by using irony, frequent repetitions, metaphors and dramatic shifts in the poem. In the poem "mending wall" the reader comes across a few aspects of this poem that can be deemed ironic. When Frost repeatedly states "Something there is that doesn't love a wall", the reader gets the impression that the speaker despises the wall and wants to encourage his neighbors to do the same. However, if you take a closer look at lines "I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;/ And on a day we meet to walk the line/And set the wall between us once again./
We keep the wall between us as we go."( l.12-15), the speaker actually instigates the wall mending process by "letting his neighbors know beyond the hill" that the wall needs to be repaired. All throughout the poem, I came across a few lines that …show more content…

He does this in order to show both aspects of the wall and to force the reader to create their own opinion regarding the wall. This repetition is effective because it gives the reader a chance to contribute their thoughts and ideas into the understanding of the poem. Frost also repeats words "to each" in the line "to each the boulders that have fallen to each" to emphasize that the speaker and his neighbor are on opposite sides of the

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