"Mending Wall"

Paper Summary:

Within Robert Frost's writing, one often encounters phrases and sentences that sound truly original, in the sense that one might never before have heard words used so strangely, while at the same time balancing simplicity with a deeper significance. In "Mending Wall", the paper highlights one of these phrases, 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall,' and along with it, its brother, 'Good fences make good neighbors', and notes that these two phrases define the landscape and progression of the poem, and through understanding each of them, we may reach a clearer sense of the poem itself. The paper concludes that the poem is a liberal encouragement to destroy borders.

From the Paper:

"Going back to the first lines of Mending Wall, we notice that the speaker in fact knows quite a bit about walls and what doesn't love them. In the first line, the mysterious tone of the line hides the fact that any mystery about that 'something' finds resolution in the next two lines: we are given enough clues in the second and third lines to deduce that the thing that sends the frozen-ground-swell under it and spills the boulders is frost. Not only does the speaker give us an answer for 'something', but he also points out another possibility in the hunters, having realized that they may be reasonable suspects, and has thought about those hunters to such detail that he even understands what causes them to destroy the walls - their hunt for rabbits."

More papers on "Mending Wall":

• Poem Review # 44401 : "The Mending Wall"
• Poem Review # 90950 : "Robert Frost 'Mending wall'"
• Poem Review # 46603 : "Mending Wall"
• Poem Review # 108993 : "Analysis of Robert Frost's "Mending Wall"

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