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Analysis of Frost's Mending Wall Essay

Decent Essays

To begin the poem, the speaker describes the various causes for the damage of the wall. When he refers to something there “that doesn’t love a wall,” he is referring to a tree, which by nature is consistently causing damage to the wall. As the roots of the tree grow, it causes the frozen ground beneath the wall to swell, and “spills the upper boulders in the sun.” Clearly this tree has a problem with the wall, and yet the speaker and his neighbor continue to fix it every year. The speaker and the neighbor have two very different opinions about the wall. The speaker questions why there must be a wall between his and his neighbor’s land. There isn’t any plausible reason for it. None of them own any cattle to keep from wandering off. The …show more content…

But that is the way it has always been, and the neighbor is “like an old-stone savage armed.” He is much more conservative, not daring to go behind the reason given by his father, “good fences make good neighbors.” The speaker is much more critical. He does not see any use for the wall, besides causing them to constantly repair the wall year after year. He scrutinizes the necessity of the wall, while the neighbor is satisfied with the reason that that’s the way it has always been.
This annual task of mending the wall, is not exactly necessary to the welfare and safety of the characters in this poem or their families, if they have any. It does not provide them with any food, or any income. It goes beyond the elementary necessities of life. Mending the wall isn’t really work, since it is not necessary for their survival, it is more of a game. Albeit it not a game in the classical sense of being for fun. This kind of game is a modern game, not done for pleasure, but to satisfy the demand for a wall. The speaker and the neighbor both have their own land, with a set boundary of where it ends. The wall is a product of modern society, which says that land is the property of a certain individual, and that individual is the owner and overseer of that property. In order for society to know what property belongs to the speaker, and what belongs to the neighbor, there must be a barrier to show the definitions of their property. Why do they continue to rebuild the

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