Robert Frost: A True Hero of Our Age
             Robert Lee Frost, one of America's leading Twentieth century poets and a four time Pulitzer Prize winner, was born in San
             Francisco in March of 1874. Although born on the West Coast, he is usually associated with New England in his poetry. He is a
             Brilliant writer whose works traditional and universal. His life's ambition was to write "a few poems that will be hard to get rid of,"
             and it is quite obvious that he was successful in achieving that goal.
             Three of Frost's obsessive themes, those of isolation, of extinction and of final limitations of man are explored widely and explicitly in his poems. The isolation of the individual is apparent in the poem; "Mending Wall" in which Frost's illustrates man's necessity for barriers to isolate themselves from their fellow men whereas in "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" the persona himself wishes to be isolated. In "After Apple-Picking" Frosts questions the possibility of extinction of the soul when one's mortal body becomes extinct. While in "Fire and Ice" Frosts looks at the ways in which humans can eliminate themselves because of the extremities of their uncontrollable emotions. The final limitations of man is presented and assessed in the poem "The road not taken".
             "Mending Wall" questions the necessity for human isolation. Walls whether physical or psychological represent isolation and imprisonment. In "Mending Wall" we find the persona interrogating his neighbour as to whether a wall is necessary between them "If I could put a notion in his head". Frost in this poem uses a simple rural activity, that is the mending of a wall, to conjure a much more universal theme that is isolation. The persona ponders at the fact why man can not live without walls, boundaries, limits and particularly self-limitations. "There where it is/ We do not need a wall". Isolation of the individual links to our desire for barriers and boundaries ...