What Doesn T Love A Wall Mean

Mending Barriers

Mending Wall by Robert Frost is about two neighbors who meet to repair a wall separating their properties. The speaker sees no reasoning for having the wall, whereas his neighbor stands firmly behind the saying, “Good fences make good neighbours.” A major theme of this poem is whether or not barriers, physical and emotional, are important and what effect they have on relationships.

In this poem, the narrator is trying to convince his neighbor that having a wall just to have a wall is no real purpose. The speaker believes ,“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” where that “something” obviously Frost. The neighbor and the speaker represent tradition and common sense. The saying, “Good fences make good neighbors,” was passed down to the neighbor from his father and now he strongly believes in this traditional way. The speaker represent common sense, for example there is a line that says, “Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.” He thinks it’s just common sense not to have a wall when there is no need for one. Walls are typically for when neighbors have livestock, and neither of these people do.

You have the speaker’s yard that is full of apple trees ,and you have the neighbor’s yard, which is filled with pine. Both are separated by the wall. This gives a feeling of individuality between them and the wall represents not only as a physical barrier, but also as a barrier between their relationship. The speaker says, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know, What I was walling in or walling out.” He is wondering whether or not they were walling in their own yards, or perhaps were they walling each other out? This hints to emotional walls in their friendship and how the narrator wants an open relationship between them, and the neighbor prefers having boundaries set