The Mending Wall

Walls and Borders Do “good fences really make good neighbors?”(666) Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall examines this as a local issue. It can also be interpreted as a global issue. Frost writes about two neighbor farmers and how a wall between their property effects the relationship between the two. Taking a more global look at the issue, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia relates to Mending Wall. Perhaps “good fences” give people a false sense of security. Robert Frost’s poem, Mending Wall, is about two neighbors who meet every year in the spring to rebuild the wall, which borders their properties. The wall is toppled each year by hunters, weather, and time. The narrator of the poem doesn’t see the point of rebuilding the wall year after year. He sees no problem with just letting the wall alone. He doesn’t understand what he is “walling in or walling out.” (667) He calls it, “an outdoor game, one on a side…it comes to little more.” (667) His neighbor, however, wants to build the wall, saying, ”Good fences make good neighbors.” (667) These neighbors have a conflicting view of the wall. One doesn’t see any sense in the wall, and the other insists that it be fixed, without giving any sensible reason. In 1991, the European country of Yugoslavia, located in southeastern Europe, in the Balkan Mountains, split into eight different nations, due to an “ethnic cleansing”. The countries formed from the split are Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, Vgivodina, and Serbia. The main reason for the split is the diversity of the ethnic groups involved. There are the Serbs, Muslims, Croats, and Bosnians. The civil war started when Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia incited a rebellion. Bosnia is the center of the conflict, being the most diverse. The Bosnian-Croat Federation occupies Western Bosnia, which includes the capital city of Sarajevo. Whereas eastern Bosnia is occupied by the Serb Republic. Sarajevo is the center of most of the fighting, because it is such a diverse city, torn by different ethnic neighborhoods. Many European countries and the United States tried to end fighting before it spread throughout Europe, creating World War 3. The Dayton Agreement was established to try to unify the city. It stated that Sarajevo’s Muslim and Serb neighborhoods are reunified under the Bosnian government, much to the disdain of the Bosnian Serbs, who want to divide the city.