Tuesday, April 9, 2019

How would you compare the attitude of the narrator and his neighbor in "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost?

The speaker doesn't like the wall. He begins the poem by stating,

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,And spills the upper boulders in the sun;And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

He feels that nature itself seems to disapprove of the wall, because it does things to break the wall down, to weaken it, and to open up gaps in it. The wall naturally sort of crumbles as a result of the weather and the natural passage of time. Rebuilding the wall just doesn't seem worth the trouble, to the speaker, because his

[...] apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his [neighbor's] pines [...]

There is nothing in need of keeping in or keeping out, since the two men only have trees on their respective properties. Further, the speaker says that before he would build a wall, he would like to know

[...] to whom I was like to give offense.

He may feel just a bit offended by his neighbor's stubborn insistence on maintaining the wall. His neighbor simply repeats the adage, "'Good fences make good neighbors.'" The implication, here, is that a neighbor isn't a good one unless he is kept from one's property (and, by implication, one's life) by such a wall. The speaker doesn't feel the need for physical boundaries or distance, but the neighbor evidently does, and so it seems as though the speaker may be precisely what the neighbor wishes to keep at a distance. I'd be offended too!


The narrator does not think that putting the wall back together is worth the effort because neither of them has animals. He thinks the only reason that they would have a wall between their farms would be to keep livestock in place. His neighbor believes keeping the fence there makes them better neighbors and wants to maintain the wall.
When the narrator tries to discuss the problem of the wall with his neighbor, he gets nowhere.

My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors?

From a practical perspective, the speaker does not think they should repair the wall because it has outlived its usefulness. In the past, there might have been animals on their farms and it was needed. Now it is a waste of time and resources. 
From a metaphorical perspective, the neighbor likes to keep distance between them. He wants a wall there. The speaker doesn’t really approve. The wall is more work than it is worth. Ironically, the only time the neighbors really come into contact is when they meet to repair the wall.

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