Timed Writing 2

Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” employs stoic imagery and structure, encompassed in a nonchalant tone, to portray the importance of boundaries. The narrator insists upon the unimportance of the walls even as he builds them back up. In contrast, his neighbor cordially defends the importance of setting the limits for fruitful relationships.

Frost introduces the first stanza by distinguishing those that “[don’t] love a wall.” The word “wall” immediately strikes the reader as a metaphor to boundaries, the most important being territorial and social boundaries. But those walls deteriorate and show gaps which the narrator comes “after them and [makes] repair.” In depicting the deterioration of the walls, Frost refers to an intangible boundary. He refers to social relationships, where limits begin to fade with time and governments must rebuild through laws, or parents through education. Frost purposely omits any separation into stanzas in an effort to mimic the absence of walls in his text. He describes different standings on the subject, but suggests his position in his writing. Accordingly, the characters meet “to walk the line and set the wall between us once again.” Frost alludes to the difficulty of maintaining boundaries and questions their productivity. Limits are constantly checked and zealously maintained by both sides regardless of what they say.

However, as the narrator mentions that “we do not need the wall,” because his apple trees will never invade the pines, his actions contradict him. In response, the neighbor suggests: “Good fences make good neighbors.” The words mean that boundaries avoid trouble. They prevent people from invading others’ privacy. The narrator then comes to the conclusion that before “I build a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.” Frost alludes to alienation and discrimination in the words “walling out.” A wall may work wonders for those it protects, but how about those it leaves out to face their troubles? A wall is an instrument of rejection, a method to distance oneself from others. For that reason, the narrator argues that “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” These words bring about all those who live outside the barriers society has erected, especially if we take into account the time period during which the poem was written as one of discord and civil unrest.

The poem culminates with the resurgence of “Good fences make good neighbors.” The repetition of these words demonstrates the neighbor’s unwillingness to change his mentality. In effect, some degree of metafiction kicks in, for the walls built inside the neighbor’s mind prevent him from considering the narrator’s words. A reflection upon the inefficiency of walls meets some solid mental blockades, thus rendering it obsolete.