mending the wall

 

Summary of Mending the Walls by Robert Frost

A stone wall separates the speaker’s property from his neighbor’s. In spring, the two meet to walk the wall and jointly make repairs. The speaker sees no reason for the wall to be kept—there are no cows to be contained, just apple and pine trees. He does not believe in walls for the sake of walls. The neighbor resorts to an old saying: “Good fences make good neighbors.” The speaker remains unconvinced and mischievously presses the neighbor to look beyond the old-fashioned folly of such reasoning. His neighbor will not be persuaded. The speaker envisions his neighbor as a holdover from a justifiably outmoded era, a living example of a dark-age mentality. But the neighbor simply repeats the proverb.

Frost begins the poem by pointing out a mysterious force that ‘doesn’t love a wall’. The examples that follow suggest that the mysterious force is mother nature. The brutal winter causes ‘the frozen-ground-swell under it’, resulting in gaps that allow ‘two [to] pass abreast’. Nature’s act of destruction ironically creates the possibility for two companions to ‘pass abreast’ in the form of a gap

Frost then distinguishes hunters as another force that destroys walls. The hunter’s purpose for dismantling the wall is purely out of self-interest – they want to lure a ‘rabbit out of hiding’ to feed their barking dogs.

The speaker comments that the gaps appear almost magically as nobody ‘has seen them made’. The idea of a mystical force that destroys walls is further developed.

The speaker then meets his neighbour to rebuild the wall together. Although this is a joint effort, the pair ‘keep the wall between’ them as they work. This small detail is important because it signifies both parties’ acknowledgement of the respect for their personal boundaries and property rights.

Another important detail to note is that they each work on ‘rocks that have fallen to each’. Although this is a collaborative effort, they only labour on their side of the wall, showing that each man takes responsibility for his own property.

The idea of a magical or mystical force is developed yet again when the speaker comments on the odd shape of the fallen boulders and how they need a ‘spell to make them balance’. The spell itself employs personification: the speaker demands that the boulders’ Stay where [they] are …’ while being aware that he’s speaking to an inanimate object.

The speaker states that the rough, manual labour wears their ‘fingers rough’. This situation could be considered ironic since the act of rebuilding the wall is slowly wearing the men down.

This section of the poem begins with the speaker expressing his curiosity about the purpose of the wall. He then gives reasons why they ‘do not need the wall’. His first reason is that he has an ‘apple orchard’, whereas his neighbour has pine trees, meaning that his apple trees will never steal the cones from the pine tree. The speaker’s perspective can be seen as potentially self-centred because he doesn’t consider that maybe his neighbour wishes to keep his garden separate to maintain his individuality.

The neighbour responds simply with the traditional adage that ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ The speaker doesn’t seem to be satisfied with this response, and he goes on to brainstorm an explanation to change his neighbour’s mind. The speaker further argues that there aren’t any cows to cross onto each other’s property. He then considers that the existence of the wall may ‘give offence’ to someone.

The speaker goes full circle and returns to the first line of the poem, ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall’. It can be said the speaker isn’t convinced by his own arguments and resorts to that seemingly unexplainable force. He considers that maybe ‘elves’ are the force destroying the walls but then dismisses this idea because he wants his neighbour to see it ‘for himself’. It seems that the speaker has come to the realisation that he can’t change a persons’ perspective of the world.

Lines 39–45

In the final section of the poem, the speaker observes his neighbour working and tries to understand who he is. It seems that the speaker thinks his neighbour is ignorant and backwards as he describes him as an ‘old-stone savage’. He sees his neighbour as being in literal and metaphorical ‘darkness’ because he can’t think for himself and won’t abandon ‘his father’s saying’.

After all of the elaborate arguments presented by the speaker, the poem ends quite simply with the adage, ‘Good fences make good neighbours’.