On ‘Mending Wall’ by Robert Frost

From the very title of this poem Robert halt implies his intention of presenting an everlasting barricade in human relationship, emblemized by the image of a seawall. Close analysis reveals a work that functions on many levels. On the surface, Mending Wall pictures a picture show in which the narrator and his live cooperate with genius another to mend a cracked wall and then begin a reasoning dispute everyplace the significance/insignificance of having a wall between them. However, as the poem develops, more underlying conflicts atomic number 18 unfolded which cast a different light on the scene before the readers. Frost takes on these issues to explore some of the more complex aspects of human relationship in modern days.The poem opens with a comment of the vex narrator ab protrude an unk outrightn force that sends the frozen-ground-swell under it/And spills the upper boulders in the sun, producing measurable gaps in the wall. By the workout of an unlikely compound noun fr ozen-ground-swell, instead of a proper word, such as ice or icicle, and the failure to relate the cracks as consequences of the former phenomenon the comment is likely to be the voice of a youth as well as a remark to the natural wonder.Then the depiction of gaps caused by hunters disrupts the scene and brings in a preliminary conflict within the narrators approximation that is, ironically, the narrator approves only of natural cracks in a wall not the man-made ones. He reasons that man-made gaps are forceful, destructive and merely for a face-to-face purpose To please the yelping dogs. On the contrary, with the pausing effect of a Caesura as well as end stops and the use of words with long vowel sounds in a line followed closely by short vowel sounds in anotherTo please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, short vowel soundsNo one has seen them made or heard them made, long vowel soundsBut at spring mending-time we breakthrough them there,the narrator expresses his wonder and ad miration to a naturally-cracked wall. This preference foreshadows the narrators silence but cold reaction on mending a wall at the end of the poem.In line 11, But at spring mending-time we find them there, along with the rebirth of spring emerge gaps in a wall, coordinated reparation as well as a remarkable irony in mending wall, all of which prepare the ground for the central conflict of modern human relationship. Acknowledged of the mending time the narrator and his neighbor gather together in order to fulfill gaps in a wall. At this stage, the two characters are unified as the first person plural we, signifying the sense of single and cooperation.This is indeed an irony the narrator and his neighbor become cooperative in order to be separate we meet and set the wall between us once again. In addition, the description of the reparation is ornamented with quick, joyful but thoughtless rhythm, following from repetitive use of enjambment and childlike metaphor Some stones are lo aves and balls. Such playful words and rhythm characterize many childlike aspects of the narrator. He is initiative and enthusiastic I let my neighbor know beyond the hill he is imaginative in a childlike way Some are loaves and some so nearly balls/We have to use a tour of duty to gull them balance. In fact, repairing a wall is a tough workTo each the boulders that have fallen to each. unstressed ending We have to use a spell to polish off them balance unstressed endingStay where you are until our backs are turnedWe wear our fingers rough with handling them.Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,hinted by such examples as the effect of interrupting uneasiness from continuous unstressed ending and some words, including have to, spell, and rough, that connote hardship. While mending the wall, the narrator is, however, overwhelmed thoughtlessly with joyful physical frolic and sense of collaboration with his neighbor. Even though he has remarked somewhere that the wall is set up again, the narrator seems ironically ignorant to the fact that mending wall bequeath later disunify his sense of we, the togetherness between himself and his neighbor. Once he realizes it an communication channel will be unavoidable.At a particular point, One on a side , Frost allows his narrator a pause for reasoning thoughts by applying a long-vowel sound followed immediately by a Caesura. The pause as well as the subsequent statement It comes to little more, reports a wondering tone and suggests in some way that the narration is developing his intellectual maturity. He begins his first argument against the significance of mending wall, saying innocently My apple trees will never get across/And eat the cones under his pines. He fails to argue his neighbors murmur satisfactory fences make good neighbors, though. Further on the main conflict of a revolutionary mind versus a blimpish one has fully developed, illustrating Frosts concerned sentiency of mental gaps in modern relati onship. The unified we has been split perpetually into two independent units I the revolutionary and He the conservative.No longer a pleasant wonder, the spring mending-time has now become mischievous to the revolutionary mind. The narrator who once eagerly informed his neighbor of the mending-wall time would now prefer a world without borders and a nearness without fences. The narrator, having passed the verge of maturity, bursts out a train of spicy, reasonable arguments made firm and effective by the use of rhetorical questions and enjambmentWhy do they make good neighbors? Isnt itWhere there are cows? But here there are no cowsBefore I built a wall Id ask to knowWhat I was walling in or walling out,And to whom I was like to give offense.He views a wall no longer as a outflow recreation nor a symbol of neighborliness and collaboration. It is a sign of offense, and he wants it down. Nonetheless, the narrator only puts a notion about the uselessness of a wall in his neighbors hea d and refuses the use of force, even though he realizes that verbal encouragement may not work. The reason lies in his earlier detestation about the work of hunters. That is, the narrator regards himself as apple orchard, polychromatic, fruitful trees of knowledge that make man civilized. Consequently, he would not degrade himself into the level of yelping dogs just to have the rabbit(an intended metaphor for his neighbor) out of hiding. He would rather have nature as he could say elves take its course in destroying the wall.The central conflict does not come as an overt interaction, and the narrators treatment towards his neighbor is courteous in a sense. But, it is not on the whole, for his remarks about the neighbor are somewhat cold and contemptuous. The narrator likens his neighbor who dare not go behind his fathers saying to a gloomy, prickling pine tree with its inedible cones. Then an image of an armed old-stone savage is deployed to humiliate his incorrigible neighbor. Fros t may be pointing out how a modern, revolutionary youth views conservatism in general, which is suggested as a step backward, a retreat into darkness.However, seeds of satire are also disseminated in the delineation of the rebelling narrator. The Fruit of Knowledge, which is compared to the revolutionary mind, is not only the cause of human intelligence but also that of human banishment from the tend of Eden. Considering himself as civilized and assuming allegedly that his belief is unarguably correct, the narrator of the Mending Wall is somehow driven by pride when he ridicules his neighbor as a prehistoric savage. Moreover, such premises as the eating of cones, the wandering of cows and the uselessness of a wall have their implication of materialism (Note that they are all materials and subscribe to the gain/loss of benefits). Frost may intend to insert these defaults to make his subversive narrator less reliable and leave space for individual readers to mark according to their own favour.When finishing Mending Wall it is possible to assert that the poem is a microcosm of our changing world in which ones are gradually separated from the others as a result of ones own bias, causing interminable gaps in human relationship. Portrayed in Mending Wall are the narrator, the revolutionary mind, who assumes arrogantly his superiority to others and his neighbor, the conservative mind, who possesses indestructible sense of stubbornness. Frost has implied that the roots of all trouble indeed lie within these two egocentric characters. The wall itself stands as an ironic symbol of integration or reconciliation and does not account for the disintegration between the narrator and his neighbor.