That realization might have served as an analogy for the candidates running in the New England primaries.Ī candidate that can win that race in Vermont because of local or regional politics may not be quite so well liked by the rest of the nation, which comprises a considerable portion of the area 'outside' New England. yet the era of American cozyness in the snug sector of the nation is somewhat of a bygone era. The removal of stones from fields allowed crops to be planted and possibly harvested. New England had fences and walls that were taken from an era in which handplaced stonework was common. I wonder how this poem might have affected Democratic politicans in the last election if they had read it? Gar圜Gibson - New England had some fine poets and politicians when much of the reset of the nation was perhaps not so populated. Yet his neighbor is not willing to live without the wall because he is not willing to embrace this-he is still clinging to his own property, or identity, as if hording it from the world. The message the poem sends me is that "walls" are for the selfish-those who are trying to hold onto "cows" only for themselves-and if we instead allow ourselves to embrace the innate diversity and value we each have, which he metaphorically describes as two types of trees, there is no need for a wall. In any case, I agree Frost's poem shows the futility of walls, in more ways than one-they are built for the intention of making "good neighbors," yet in the narrator's case they only serve to divide the neighbors where no division is necessary. I think it's more likely that the wall is just a formality, something to give the final resting place of so many people honor, or that it is intended to create a divide between the living and dead, possibly based on old superstitions that survived in this form. Anyone wanting to desecrate it will do so, and no one will not desecrate it for lack of the knowledge that it is a cemetary. The essay itself is about neither Frost, nor the poem, per se.ĪlpPDCjr12 - That's true, but a fence doesn't discriminate between who it lets in and out. Frost's observations on the conservative aspects of human relations and the willingness of the speaker to goad his neighbor to think another way inspired me to include references to "Mending Wall" in my journal essay. It has such a dreadful history." Nevertheless, poetry particularly that which is written with such subtlety, is capable of inspiring different authors in different ways. At one point he referred to himself, with a touch of self-flattery, as a "freethinker", and his mother objected: "Oh please don't use that word. He was not an atheist, he maintained, though he did subscribe to many of the views put forward by people who were.
Jay Parini writes in Robert Frost: A Life (page 29): " apparently quarreled frequently about his seeming "atheism", although Frost consistently defended himself against this charge. Indeed, though raised Christian many would classify Frost as agnostic. Nor did I mean to imply that he was overtly (or even privately) Christian. "Mending Wall" is clearly one of Frost's many wry, social commentaries on human relationships. I should comment that at least one person who read my journal said they would now go and read this poem.īy citing Frost, I was by no means implying that Robert Frost's poem, “Mending Wall”, was about compassion. If it is the consensus of the ORT that it should be removed I will do so voluntarily. John D - My comment is more about how Frost, through this poem in particular, has influenced my own worldview. He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors." He will not go behind his father's saying,Īnd he likes having thought of it so well Not of woods only and the shade of trees. In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,īut it's not elves exactly, and I'd ratherīringing a stone grasped firmly by the top Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. "Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors." There where it is we do not need the wall:Īnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. We wear our fingers rough with handling them. "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!" We have to use a spell to make them balance: To each the boulders that have fallen to each.Īnd some are loaves and some so nearly balls No one has seen them made or heard them made,īut at spring mending-time we find them there. Where they have left not one stone on a stone,īut they would have the rabbit out of hiding, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,Īnd spills the upper boulders in the sun Īnd makes gaps even two can pass abreast. Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
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