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Poet: Robert Frost
Poem: 1.
Mending Wall
Volume: North of Boston
Year: Published/Written in 1914
Poem of the Day:
Jul 13 2000
Comment 56 of 56, added on April 3rd, 2008 at 5:14 PM.
just to clarify what Nick in comment 50 said: this poem is not about the Berlin Wall. It is often interpreted like that but this poem was written in 1914, which was before the Berlin wall was constructed.
Mansi from United States
Comment 55 of 56, added on December 20th, 2007 at 1:29 AM.
Mending Wall is one of the poems that I'm studying in IB this year. The poem starts out with the ambiguous "Something there is that doesn't love a wall". Frost ponders why there's something in him, perhaps in all humans that doesn't like walls. Yet the irony is that he contacted his neighbor "I let my neighbor know beyond the hill" to fix the wall. Frost is the one that instigates this fixing of the wall. He also mocks his neighbor a bit, repeating "good fences make good neighbors", as if the man is very stubborn and determined to fix the fence. Also, Frost's neighbor seems to be ignorant or simplistic, perhaps even primitive. The neighbor is described to be "like an old-stone savage". Yet, at the very end of the poem, Frost seems to come to the realization that fences, though he may not like them, are necessary because they give people a sense of security. The end of the poem is much darker than the rest of the poem, and Frost seems to see that there may be a part of his neighbor that he, too, would like to keep away from him, as shown by,
"In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
It seems that his neighbor can appear dangerous as well, and Frost ends with his neighbor's statement, "Good fences make good neighbors". In short, the fence is what physically keeps the two neighbors apart, but also brings them together each spring to mend it once again.
I. Lao from United States
Comment 54 of 56, added on November 4th, 2007 at 9:37 AM.
this poem presnts two views, 1) why do walls make good neighbors? and 2)why dont walls make good neighbors? This is the typical writing style of Robert Frost, he presents a conflict then ask the reader to create his/her own solution. in this poem i think that
creating the wall maintains friendship, from a metaphorical point of view the walls can be seen as the personal barriers which we build up to maitain a relationship with our peers, that is it is not everything we do that we want our friends to know about hence we create secrets,diaries et cetera to keep 'things'away.From the other view point i think robert is trying to pose why should we do this?(that is create barriers) Dont we love one another?
navare harriott from Jamaica
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just to clarify what Nick in comment 50 said: this poem is not about the Berlin Wall. It is often interpreted like that but this poem was written in 1914, which was before the Berlin wall was constructed.
Mansi from United States