Introduction

Famous American poet Robert Frost is known for writing poems about rural life and his realistic
verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations. One of his most famous poems is the
"Mending Wall". In this paper I shall analyze the poem.

Introduction to the poet and poem

Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California. After high school, Frost
attended Dartmouth College for several months. Frost had little success as a poet in his youth
but by the age of 40, he soon began to see success.

Despite being popular for his rural life poetry, Frost was brought up in the city. The first poem
of Frost got published in his high school magazine. He went to Dartmouth College for only two
months, which was considered enough to be acquired into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. He
then returned back, taught and worked for numerous jobs such as helping his mother teach her
class of unruly boys, delivering newspapers, and working in a factory as a light bulb filament
changer. However, he never enjoyed performing these odd-jobs. To him, poetry was where his
heart was.

Robert Frost is among the most fecund writers when it comes to poetry and playwriting. He was
highly appreciated and admired for his realistic portrayal of rural life and his great expertise on
American colloquial speech. Most of his astonishing works circle around the rural life settings in
New England during early 20th century. He used his own work to analyze complicated social
and philosophical themes. Robert Frost is very famous and an oft-quoted poet. During his
lifetime, he was honored with several prizes which include four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.

Frost's major works include:

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

"Mending Wall"

"Fire and Ice"

"The Road Not Taken"

The "Mending Wall" is a poem based on a boundary between neighbours' properties. 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 adage: “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 swayed. The speaker envisions his neighbor as a
holdover from a justifiably outmoded era, a living example of a dark-age mentality. However,
the neighbor simply repeats the adage.

"Good Fences Make Great Neighbors"

"Good fences make great neighbors" is the most famous line of the poem. It simply holds the
essence of the poem's meaning. One of the most common interpretations is that people by
nature put barriers between themselves and other people. The speaker of the poem seems to
think it is an outdated concept and questions whether it is necessary. A good fence is a
demarcation between neighbors that is understood and agreed. It means that nobody can
overstep their property and take a liberty. It maintains the status quo. Without the fence there
would be anarchy. Good neighbors respect one another's property. Good farmers, for example,
maintain their fences in order to keep their livestock from wandering onto neighboring farms.

States have boundaries defined by fences, walls, ditches and even land mines! The adjacent
states must be clear about where their land stops to avoid conflict leading to war.

Ultimately, the presence of the wall between the properties does ensure a quality relationship
between the two neighbors. Moreover, the annual act of mending the wall also provides an
opportunity for the two men to interact and communicate with each other, which might not
have happened in an isolated rural environment. The act of meeting to repair the wall allows
the two men to develop their relationship and the overall community far more than if each
maintained their isolation on separate properties.
Why Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors?

Robert Frost examines what role fences play in shaping relationships between neighbors. Do
neighbors get along better because of walls separating their properties? Frost quotes his
neighbor several times as saying “good fences make good neighbors.” But the idea has several
interpretations. The most obvious meaning is that walls separate people from one another and
that this separation eliminates the possibilities for feuds or disappointments, or trespassing,
both literally and figuratively, on a neighbor’s domain. A second possibility is that fences make
for good neighbors because each year Frost must work with his neighbor to repair the fence.
The joint cooperative effort means that the neighbors have a reason to get together at least
once a year and complete a common task under positive circumstances. The first line of the
poem supports the second idea: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” The wall requires
annual repairs because over the course of a year the stones in the wall fall out and various
natural objects create spaces in the wall. Human forces, including hunters, also cause breaks in
the wall, showing that trespass is a common event in Frost’s world. To deal with these
problems, Frost and his neighbor “meet to walk the line, And set the wall between us once
again.” Each neighbor stays on his side of the wall as they make repairs, which would seem to
support the neighbor’s belief, learned from his father, that respecting each other's privacy and
distance is the best way to build relationships.

In some jurisdictions at least, neighbors share the legal responsibility, and thus the cost, of
maintaining fences. A good fence both represents and supports the fundamental equality of
neighbors, while protecting the separateness and independence of each.

A “bad fence”, on the other hand, might one-sidedly protect one neighbor against the other,
maintaining and symbolizing inequalities or even inequities. The sole owner of such a fence is
protected as an insider, while those outside have no share of ownership or protection.

The maintenance of “good fences” is thus part of the responsibility of citizenship. It maintains
the fabric of the community.

Overall, building a fence also means respecting the neighbor's property, boundary and privacy.
Frost doesn’t give us the final answer as to the value of walls. It may depend on the attitude of
the neighbors who share it and therefore, ultimately, it is up to us to interpret the meaning of
the line "Good fences make good neighbors" in our own way.
Conclusion

"Mending Wall" is about the boundary between neighbors' property. Building a wall is a
traditional thing to do. It also helps to maintain a privacy and thus a good relationship. Lastly,
while fixing a wall, people can socialize with their neighbors.