Mending Wall
Mending Wall Biography Robert Frost was inspired to write Mending Wall after talking with one of his farming friend Napoleon Guay. He learned from talking with his neighbor that writing in the tones of real life is an important factor in his poetic form (Liu,Tam). Henry David Thoreau once stated that, “A true account of the actual is the purest poetry.” Another factor that might have played a role in inspiring Frost to write this poem was his experience of living on a farm as a small boy. Mending Wall was published in 1915 along with a collection of Frost’s poems in North of Boston. Theme Statements Nature dissolves the barriers that humanity erects. The purpose of the wall in this poem was to isolate one’s personality and privacy. In line one and thirty-five, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” reveals that nature has no boundaries, and because it, “doesn’t love the wall,” nature attempts destroy that boundary to bring humanity and the environment together in a harmonious bond. Nature has made, “… gaps even two can pass abreast,” shows how nature has made a hole big enough for one person to walk across, and towards another person’s property to talk. But, it also shows how humans are still unknowingly walling one another . . .
Onomatopoeia Like an auditory sound in the poem, it gives the reader a reason to why the wall is in its ruinous state. The pine trees are solid, steady, and cointinueuesly grows and matures with time every day of the season, and represents the traditional side. In line 17, the youth is talking about how the wall has dropped bricks the shape of, “loaves and balls. Instead he accepts this to an extent and is still contemplating ways to how he can, “If I could put a notion in his head…(line 29)” Frustration (lines 36 and 40) Within the youth there is an internal conflict because he does not want to go along with the old man’s tradition. That something is the relationship between the two characters, because before the wall was being put together, the youth in lines 1-22 refers to himself and the old man as “we” and “us. In line 38-40 the youth comments, “I see him there…like an old-savage armed,” with this quote, we see that the old man is being compared to an old, primitive being who cannot accept change. All 45 five lines were written in iambic pentameter, and voiced narratively. Mending the wall itself, is also a symbol, to be exact it has two meanings, a double entondra. The wall itself is a symbol; it represents the conflict between tradition and change. The middle line of the poem is, “There where it is we do not need the wall…”, which represents the dividing point of the poem, a barrier of sorts. Nature wanted both the youth and the old man to walk side by side with one another through the wall. It will be a waste of breath to the youth because he will not be able to change the old man’s senile attitude. The most noticeable one in the poem was in lines 14 and 15 because deals with two walls as mentioned in symbols.
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