Robert Frost Critique--Mending wall
Robert Frost was perhaps one of the most beloved and popular of twentieth century American poets. Although Frost is known for using nature in his poetry, he often dealt with people interacting with each other. In most of his poems the possibility exists for two people to work together and often times it is two males, which shows Frost’s desire for male companionship. Because of the lack of male companionship Frost had in his life, he used his poetry to write about the need for it and the need for human interaction in general. As a strong advocate of individualism, Frost thought man should learn his limitations from nature and struggle to achieve whatever he can within these boundaries with the talents he has been granted. Conversely, Frost saw man as achieving little if he considers only himself, isolated from those around him (Gerber 146). Frost lived a life darker than most men experience. With the death of his father at age eleven and his son at age four, he was never able to fully experience male companionship. He wrote about this type of relationship in his poems and the underlying message, which must be looke . . .
As shown, Robert Frost desired interaction with other people. When Frost wrote about time spent with another man in “Mending Wall” he was either cherishing actual moments like these or longing to have them. One of the characters doesn’t even think the wall is needed and yet he works with the other to rebuild it. Perhaps the building of a wall signifies that the two men get enough time around the other and don’t want or need to see each other until the next spring. The point is that there may be a clash of forces or some bitterness between the two. The wall of rocks is broken apart by frost every winter and the two walk together, but on separate sides of the wall and put the rocks back in place. The two can’t relate on many terms but they can always find common ground and feel like companions through or while working, at least for a short time. It is known that Frost lived a fairly solitary lifestyle while he worked on his poetry. Its two most famous lines oppose each other (Untermeyer 110). The large body of commentary on this poem includes discussion of it as a social metaphor and as an illustration of a personal struggle for balance between withdrawal and commitment, individuality and socialization, as this conflict occurs throughout Frost’s poetry and life (Marcus 34). ” Then it’s almost as if he’s trying to push the other man’s buttons when he goes on to say, “That wants it down. To take it a step further, he highly valued male companionship as was illustrated by the poem mentioned. “Mending Wall” is often quoted out of context and mistakenly said to declare that “Good fences make good neighbors,” which-as Frost sometimes had to point out-is the formula of the poem’s antagonist (Marcus 42).
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