Robert Frost is considered one of the greatest American poets of all time. He created imagery and cultural memes that exist in American culture to this day; indeed, some of what is considered trite and overdone in poetry was introduced into the art by Frost. “Mending Wall,” one of Frost’s most famous pieces of poetry, is particularly prevalent and common in American culture, even today. Different critics analyze the text of “Mending Wall” differently, but there are a few different camps that analyses of this particular poem fall into.
Some critics, while analyzing “Mending Wall,” take into account the socio-political state of the world at the time it was published-- in 1914, when the poem was published, the world was embroiled in the conflict of World War 1. Many countries were attempting to enact isolationist policies, and some critics believe that this is the issue Frost was approaching with “Mending Wall.” However, this is not the most engaging or the most convincing approach to analysis of this particular poem, although it does have some merits.
Instead, it is more convincing to look at “Mending Wall” as a discussion of neighborliness, and of the morality of wall-building on a variety of levels. Frost writes:
The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
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. (Frost)
Here, the wall is both a literal and a figurative rhetorical device; the neighbor and the speaker are keeping the wall between them as a physical barrier, but the speaker can also sense that his or her neighbor has erected a kind of mental wall between the two, as well. Dearden agrees with this analysis, stating that the wall is acting as a barrier between the two individuals, interfering with their ability to interact based on their common humanity.
The motif of the wall is an interesting one, however, because the wall is not stable or immobile; throughout the poem, the wall is shown to be almost living, and constantly at risk for falling over. Frost writes, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall/That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,/And spills the upper boulders in the sun;/And makes gaps even two can pass abreast” (Frost). The wall is moving, changing; it is not as impenetrable as the neighbor seems to want it to be, and this is what causes the speaker to question whether or not a wall is a good thing.
The wall acts as a dividing line between the speaker’s property and the neighbor’s property, but the speaker asks increasingly pointed questions about the nature and importance of the wall. He points out that his neighbor is “all pine” and he is “apple orchard;” indicating that the sense of individualism would not be lost should the wall come down (Frost).
If we accept that the wall is a metaphor for the separation between two individuals, then the distinction between pine and apple orchard is much more apt. The neighbor in the poem seems concerned that the speaker will encroach into his or her personal, individual space; his or her reason for keeping the wall up, then, is protection and perhaps even slight fear of true human interaction with his or her neighbor.
Another fascinating dichotomy presented in the poem is the idea of “mending” as it is contrasted to the idea of the wall. Mending implies fixing something that is broken, but the speaker seems to believe that the fact that the wall exists at all is the part of the interaction that is broken. According to Kemp,
He is quick to think the worst, presuming that the farmer's concern with the wall is motivated by base selfishness, despite the latter's expressed interest in being "good neighbors." Furthermore, it is not the farmer but the speaker who initiates the mending-wall ritual Such a forceful line crystallizes the poem's dramatic conflict by standing in salient opposition to everything the persona has said and, indeed, to his mode of speech. It is a remarkable and memorable line, not because of its inherent truth or quotability, but because of Frost's effective anticipatory presentation of an extraordinarily imaginative antagonism to “good fences.” (“On ‘Mending Wall’”).
This is an interesting analysis of the interaction between the speaker and the farmer; it reaches deep into the primal worry that everyone has about interacting with people they don’t know well-- the fear of being misunderstood. This fence-- or the wall, so to speak-- is meant to alleviate some of this tension, but instead of alleviating the tension, the speaker feels more stress and worry over the issue of mending the wall.
The speaker sinks deeper into a hypothetical conversation with himself, speaking in his mind to his neighbor. Frost writes, “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” (Frost). The speaker never voices these concerns aloud, however, furthering the idea that there is a very real wall between the speaker and the neighbor that the speaker is having a very difficult time breaking through to communicate effectively with the other individual.
There is something that doesn’t love a wall, according to Frost, but he stops just short of explaining exactly what does not love a wall. Literally, of course, he means that weathering and time cause all walls to come crumbling down, but this is not the important metaphorical meaning that is meant to be taken from the poem.
Instead, the reader should take away the parallel between nature and humanity; if nature does not love a wall, Frost postulates, then we should not love walls, as we are part of nature. The shared humanity of the speaker and his neighbor is reduced by the wall, and the speaker feels incapable of expressing himself properly to the neighbor, a fact that causes him great anxiety and perhaps even pain.
Not many of Frost’s poems were designed to teach such an overt lesson, but “Mending Wall” is one of his most famous pieces for a reason-- he has created a narrative and an image that is powerful and easily absorbed because it speaks to the shared humanity in every reader. The poem never tells the reader not to build walls, but instead, it discusses obliquely the problems that humanity faces when it does choose to build walls.
While the political analysis of the poem seems incomplete and unlikely, there is certainly a lesson taught within the poem that can be applied to politics, war, and international cooperation. The poem acknowledges the differences between the speaker and his or her neighbor, but then goes on to demonstrate the fact that the wall itself is unnecessary because of those differences, rather than in spite of them, as so many seem to believe.
Works cited
Dearden, Luke. "Poetry analysis: Mending Wall, by Robert Frost." 2009. Web. 8 Mar 2013.
English.illinois.edu. “On ‘Mending Wall’.” 1974. Web. 8 Mar 2013.
Frost, Robert. "Mending Wall- Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More." 1914. Web. 8 Mar 2013.
Kean.edu. "The Mending Wall." 2005. Web. 8 Mar 2013.
