Analysis of Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Analysis of Mending Wall by Robert Frost

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 out from each other’s lives. Tradition undermines the desire for change. As the poem progresses it gradually changes from young ideals to old tradition. The old man in the end, is presenting what he learned from his father through tradition. In line 43, “He will not go behind his father’s saying,” it clearly states that he will not stray from his father’s teachings and the tradition set by his antecedents. Why change something they isn’t broken? Even though the youth has his poin...

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...words “he” seven times and “him” or “his” once. Frustration led to sarcasm in the youth’s arguments, but in the end the poem ended in wisdom. It started out with a silly question about why there was a need for a wall, but ended with an enlightened remark by the old man. The poem contained four colons, which shifted the youth’s thought to one argument to another; the colon was a transitional tool Frost used very well in this poem. Like most of Frost’s other poems, the majority of this poem was thought up in the narrator’s head. And like his other poems, their contained dialogue, a setting, characters, a conflict and an ending. Form This poem was written in blank verse and not a free verse because it was written in an iambic pentameter without rhyme. It went stressed-unstressed for 5 meters. All 45 five lines were written in iambic pentameter, and voiced narratively.