Mending Wall - Thoughts

 

     To be honest, I am baffled that I haven’t read this poem earlier. Yes, I’ve heard about the poem but never had the chance to read it. But here I am, taken a bite off this beautiful piece of art, trying to sway you into reading it too!

 

      Mending Wall by Robert Frost is a simple pastoral style poem, dealing with deeper paradoxes with a touch of levity, and you would feel the warmth of the poem right from the first line.

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”

 

       We have the speaker, presumably from a rural area, observing that there is some force of nature that despises the presence of a wall between him and his neighbour. The speaker and the neighbour have cooked up a sort of tradition where, once every year in spring they mend their sides of the wall together.

 

     However the speaker does not understand the purpose of the wall. Maybe yes if they had cattle, or if they had the same types of trees on both sides. As the neighbour says “Good fences make good neighbours”, the speaker is confused. However funnily enough, it is the speaker who calls the neighbour for their annual event, ‘mending wall’. He finds a childish mischief and fun in fixing the wall long with his neighbour, who always takes a serious tone to the work,

 

      Reading the poem for the first time we are obviously amused by our speaker who finds it unnecessary to have a wall in the first place however enjoying taking back the rocks, putting them back in place. Although it appears as a paradox, when you give it a thought, it does makes sense.

 

      Firstly, let us look at the neighbour. He considers mending the wall a laborious yet essential part of being a neighbour. He suggests that boundaries are necessary for good relationships. In the modern sense, he does make a point. We need our own personal space.

 

     Now let us hear what our speaker has to say. He finds no reason for a wall to exist between their grounds. There are no conflicts and as he says, its highly unlikely that his apple trees would trespass and eat his pine cones. However he is grateful that the wall exists, and more importantly the supernatural energy associated with the wall that breaks it every year, giving an opportunity for him to work alongside his neighbour. He enjoys the act of mending the wall itself, chanting and ordering the rocks to stay in place as they work together in spring.

 

    An interesting observation that I would like to make here is that, the wall and its ability to break itself down every year is a good thing, a force of divine intervention, that carries on the relationship between the speaker and his neighbour. Suppose the wall was strong enough that it never broke, the spring ritual of mending wall would never happen. The speaker would never be able to indulge himself in the fun act of mending the wall.

 

      Good fences do not make good neighbours, evil spirts that hate walls do!

Until next time dear reader!

Lan