Line to line explanation of mending wall by Robert Frost
Answers
Answer:
Written in 1914, Mending Wall is a poem in blank verse that remains relevant for these uncertain times. It involves two rural neighbors who one spring day meet to walk along the wall that separates their properties and repair it where needed.
The speaker in the poem is a progressive individual who starts to question the need for such a wall in the first place. The neighbor beyond the hill is a traditionalist and has, it seems, little time for such nonsense.
'Good fences make good neighbors,' is all he will say.
We all have neighbors, we all know that walls eventually need repairing. Walls separate and keep people apart, walls deny right of passage and yet provide security. Despite the need for such a barrier, the opening line - Something there is that doesn't love a wall, - implies that the idea of a wall isn't that straightforward.
Robert Frost, in his own inimitable way, invites the reader into controversy by introducing mischief into the poem. The speaker wants to put a notion into the head of his neighbor, to ask him to explain why is it good walls make good neighbors, but in the end says nothing.
A wall may seem useful in the countryside as it could help keep livestock safe and secure and mark a definite boundary. But a wall that separates village from village, city from city, country from country, people from people, family from family - that's a completely different scenario.
Robert Frost's poem can help pinpoint such issues and bring them out into the open.
Answer:
Mending Wall is a dramatic-narrative poem by Robert Frost, a popular American poet.
This poem is the first work in Frost’s second book of poetry, North of Boston (1915).
this poem, he has tried to explore the way people isolate themselves physically and emotionally by building barriers like fences to derive a sense of safety.
The poem Mending Wall is believed to be built upon Frost’s relationship with his neighbour a French-Canadian named Napoleon Guay in New Hampshire with, of course, a wider understanding of the issues.