Mending Wall
It is arguable that the self-righteous speaker of "Mending Wall" is himself obsessively committed to wall building, far more intractably and instinctively committed than his cliche-bound neighbor. While the speaker of "Mending Wall" justifiably castigates his unthinking neighbor and is himself far more aware of the powers of language for good and for ill, he is nonetheless caught up, ironically perhaps, in the same actual task, wall building, which will have the same results and look no different from his neighbor's contribution despite the narrative he brings to it. There are several possibilities for irony here, depending on the level of Frost's self-awareness. Wall imagery pervades his poetry, as a conscious poetic image and as a psychosexual marker of control and limitation. That the speaker is the one who calls the neighbor to mend the wall is vitally important, then, but it is not clear that Frost meant for the speaker to be ironically perceived as a hypocrite. The simple explanation, that the speaker acts out of a sense of inevitability, knowing his neighbor's habits, seems hardly enough given the contextual symbolism of the wall in Frost's poetry; the psychological explanation attendant
Maybe this persona is a lonely person and any company is good company - they "meet to walk the line". But being ignorant and stubborn as we all are, we do not forgive and forget right away. Hoping to always go through life the easy way. A strong relationship requires quarrels and forgiveness, if either one is missing from this world, it would either be utopian or hell. "Neighbor" is here a metaphor for two people who are emotionally close to each other. These are all viable options and as we read further into the poem we may understand to a greater extent why he does this. If you trust and forgive your someone too much it will only lead to more trouble, be cautious and learn to back away or reject a person if you are being mistreated, and if they really care or wants to be a "good neighbor" they will respect your thoughts and will learn they have said or done to you was wrong. It is the most volatile and at the same time important part of any poem. "He is all pine and I am apple orchard", the poem says. "My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He thinks that his "neighbor" is of a dark disposition. However, I would say that their emotions, especially the main character's, try to get the boulders off balance so the wall can be leveled with the ground. The neighbor in the poem is not a Yankee as represented, but is actually A French-Canadian who was very particular every spring about setting up the wall. In this situation the "I" voice wants to tear down this barricade while his "neighbor" wants to keep it.
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