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Chapter-4
Walls and Barriers
A. Frost: The Classicist
Robert Frost is a classical poet in the sense that he conducted a heroic poetical
war against all metaphysical and physical universal forces in operation. As he himself
states he had "A lover's quarrel with the world" (CP 476).
The 'lover's quarrel'
metaphor is just the way of slighting the insurmountable and unconquerable nature of the
other as a contending partner of the self. However, Yvor Winters characterises him as .'1;
.
. A poet of minor themes, casual approach, and discretely eccentric attitude" (58). While
the 'eccentric attitude' of Robert Frost is his poetical marmer of characterising man as an
empty hero, Yvor Winters is not justified in calling him 'A poet of minor themes.'
In all the classical literature and the mythological !ores before it, the permanent
theme of poetry and religion had always been man's fight with nature, fellowmen, and
the self. While the modalities of myths and fables characterised man, the fighter, as a
superhuman agent in the form of the anonymous mythic lorists and the inspired prophets,
the classics define man as a heroic fighter, with ingenious intellectual properties and
physical courage to contend with nature and the supernatural.
But in our times, since the heroic ages are a story of the past, man the non-hero or
the anti-hero conducts his fight with the universe as an unequal contender. But the spirit
in which he contends his war is no way Jess courageous. Yvor Winters has some more
reasons to deny for Frost the status of a classical poet. It is true that Robert Frost is a
popular poet, but Yvor Winters says,
"Classical literature is said to judge human
experience with respect to the norm; but it does so with respect to the norm of what
humanity ought to be in a particular place and time" (59).
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Needless to say, Yvor Winters is too much under the influence of the confusions
created by the British Neo Classicists. While the judgement of the classical literature is
in accordance with the norms, such norms had always been determined in accordance
with the intellectual standards of the time. The norms are not certainly rigid formalist
structural advices. As a matter of fact Frost's success as a classical poet is in handling his
poetic language. He had always been praised for creating apt poetical metaphors for his
abundant personal experiences in rapport with nature and fellowmen.
In order to appreciate his classical worth we have to take his figures of speech in
accordance with the inner authentic feelings of the poet himself. Helen H. Bacon, quotes
a statement by Frost: "Success in taking figures of speech is as intoxicating as success in
making figures of speech . . . . The heart sinks when robbed of the chance to see for itself
what a poem is all about" (qtd. in Bacon 35). Frost gave this statement in his essay "The
Prerequisites."
Yvor Winters' stands on Robert Frost were sufficiently answered by Helen H.
Bacon in her essay "In and Outdoor Schooling: Robert Frost and the Classics." After
discussing the influence of the Greek classical poets, dramatists and the Biblical prophets,
Helen H. Bacon says, "He [Frost] likes to drop a clue in the form of an allusion to a
passage in the Bible or English Literature, which, while not in itself false, is not the
whole story" (36). This point of dropping a clue is a poetic necessity for Frost. Says
Frost, "You have got to have something to say to the sphinx" (qtd. in Bacon 36). Frost
gave this statement in a commencement address at Darmouth in 1955. This saying 'to the
sphinx' is always an exhausting exercise. It is not at all possible to find exact answers for
the problems proposed by the sphinx. Frost is a poet of humanity.
Yvor Wanters,
however. admits: "The view of human nature which we have seen Frost to hold is one
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that must lead of necessity to a feeling that the individual man is small, lost and
unimportant in the midst of a vast and changing universe" (77).
Frost had characterised man as 'small, lost and unimportant.' It is all just a
playful manner of depicting exact contraries to the classical and mythological times
where man was always depicted as big, belonging, and important. In a sense Frost
receives the ancient myths and classics in an antiheroic manner. As a matter of fact Frost
himself as a poet has become a magnificent mythic figure in our times. The words of
Lionel Trilling are worth quoting here:
The time of year at which these ritual observances took place makes it
plain to the archaeologists that they are almost certainly not dealing with
an historical individual but rather with a solar myth, a fertility figure.
They go on to expound the subtle process of myth which is to be observed
in the fact that this vernal spirit was called Frost, a name which seems to
contradict his nature and function. In their effort to explain this anomaly,
they take note of evidence which suggests that the early North Americans
believed that there were once two brothers, Robert Frost and Jack Frost, of
whom one, Jack, remained unregenerate and hostile to mankind, while the
other brother became its friend. (!53 -154)
Lionel Trilling here aptly distinguishes between Frost the poet and Frost the chief
spokesman of his poetry. It is Frost the chief spokesman of his poetry that exists "not
only in a human way but also in a mythical way," to quote Trilling (154). Trilling further
expands the idea of Frost being a mythic poet in the following words:
They say, cogently enough, that mythical figures often embody
contradictory principles, that just as Apollo was both destroyer and
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preserver, so Robert Frost was at one and the same time both ice and sun,
and they point to a dark saying attributed to him: 'Like a piece of ice on a
hot stove, the poem must ride on its own melting.' ( 154)
B. The Barrier
The classical endowment in Frost and his poetry is best found in the manner in
which he depicts the barriers or the obstructions in the ways of man, the victorious agent,
in the world of existence. He accepts the fact that the fight between the creator and the
created is always there, and man is establishing himself as a free and victorious agent in
the world of existence. He accepts the fact that the fight between man and the universe is
an unequal fight. Therefore, the barrier between the creator and the created is always
maintained. This is well brought out in Marion Montgomery's essay, "Robert Frost and
His Use of Barriers- Man Versus Nature Toward God":
God will not let man see completely into the life of things. To this barrier
are added the limitations imposed on man by his reason, or mind, and his
desire, or heart. Yet reason and desire arouse the complementary faith
which helps man accept his situation and grow from that point of
acceptance.
For here is true understanding in man, the recognition
through reason, and acceptance through faith, of man's limitations and of
the belief in God as 'that which man is sure cares, and will save him, no
matter how many times or how completely he has failed', as Frost said in
1916. (145)
Man's existence in this world is infinitely obstructed by the barriers. In fact his
cherished goal in life is in overpowering these barriers by way of nurturing in himself a
courage to be in this world of mysteries, doubts and difficulties. Needless to say that
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achievement of this kind of courage is the poetic goal of Robert Frost. He knows it fully
well that his poetic manner of counteracting with the barriers is only a momentary stay
from confusion. But if life is proved with such continual momentary stays, there is a way
of withstanding the insurmountable physical forces of the world.
It is towards this end that Robert Frost seeks certain clarifications by way of
poetically metamorphosing the oppositional forces as contending partners in the play of
life.
This kind of mytho-poetic comprehension of the objective world is the only
alternative left for man as a living agent in the world of existence. Existence provides no
permanent solution. It only gives momentary apprehensions which may be true or may
not be true in the (\ltimate sense.
But in the middle ground of the intermediary sense such mythic elevations of the
self and the objective world serves the poetic purpose of achieving a necessary courage to
be in the world of existence. This necessary courage comes only with verbal elevation or
verbal deviation of the world of experience into intelligible, comprehensible particular in
the imaginative experience of man. So, the only way to withstand the vicissitudes of the
changing and the metamorphosing world is to be found in the poetical act of conveniently
metamorphosing the world itself in all the possible manners which imagination permits.
Robert Frost's poem "Triple Bronze" is very important in this context. Says Frost, "The
Infinite's being so wide I Is the reason the powers provide I For inner defense my hide"
(CP 468).
The human limitations are obvious, but the same infinite which is so wide had
provided the powers for inner defence. This power is in 'my hide.' Needless to say that
Frost is playing on the word 'hide' in a poetically intriguing manner-'hide' in the sense
of potential muscle force and 'hide' in the sense of stepping into the secrecy or darkness.
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This illl1er defence is both a place of hiding as an authentic self and also a place which
nurtures a typical courage to face the world equally. In order to face this world he
conceives in himself a triple manner of distinguishing and designating the world as a
worth defensible formula. When once the inner defence is established there is a need of
that outer defence also. Therefore, he says,
For next defence outside
I make myself this time
Of wood or granite or lime
A wall too hard for crime
Either to breach or climb. (CP 468)
So the poet's making himself 'Of wood or granite or lime' is his own momentary ('this
time') maiUler of trying to stay from confusion.
In his heart of hearts the poet is
conscious of this permanence in the universe. He prefers to metamorphose himself into
'wood' or 'granite' or 'lime.' The 'wood' suggestively refers to taking recourse into the
anonymity of nature through Deistic and Pantheistic measures of operation. If such
metamorphosis of the self is not possible, he fervently needs to build a granite wall. St.
Matthews speaks of building the house on the solid hard rock. Granite is Frosts poetical
substitute for St. Matthews 'Rock' that stands for the true faith on which man has to build
his superstructure.
Frost knows that he is fighting a war in which he is fated to lose. In case this
metamorphosis into wood or granite for his self is not possible, his lead is so fervent that
he satisfies himself by turning himself into lime. What all Frost wants to say is that man
must build himself as a being in the world. When once such metamorphosed structure is
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made in himself there should be no vacillation, or withdrawal, or running away from the
game of life. So the wall or the barrier that he proposes to construct could be 'hard for
crime.' There should be no 'breach' or there should be no sneaky effort of climbing the
wall and running away.
Frost wants a faith for himself. And according to him, this faith is possible for
man, if he establishes himself firmly. As Dorothy Judd Hall rightly points out, "For
Frost, the concept of trust without-experience, or trust-with-insufficient-knowledge, was a
common bond between poetry and religion" (73). In both religion and poetry mail is
under a necessity to effect an intellectual compromise with the irrational. But, however,
the concluding stanza of the "Triple Bronze" gives an interesting antithetical shake or
reversal by way of terminating the argument into an interesting conclusion. Says Frost,
Then a number of us agree
On a national boundary
And that defence makes three
Between too much and me. (CP 468)
The interesting manner in which he subverts or counteracts the argument in
favour of a necessary boundary terminate into an unnecessary composite when it comes
to the ideal unity of humanity. This national boundary and the defence that is made out
of it is equal to all the three possible defence he stipulated about, that is_.. 'wood' or
'granite' or 'lime.' When it comes to the question of this national boundary, Frost wants
to say that this kind of boundary is a typical barrier or obstruction between 'too much,'
that is the cosmos, and 'me' meaning his own cosmic self.
The poem which started with the categorical necessity of the need of a strong
barrier for the self, in quite an Ovidian manner of metamorphosis, terminates into the
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possible vexation that this external obstruction or boundary is capable of creating a
barrier for his cosmic aspirations of the self. Lawrence Thompson rightly pointed out
that Robert Frost is a dualist and a monist and even a pluralist at the same time.
The 'wall' metaphor in the poem acquires two contradictory meanings separately.
To start with, he wants to build a barrier or wall in himself in order to nurture in himself a
courage-to-be. At the same time any other wall conceived and established by the human
institutions, like a 'national boundary,' is resented by him. The necessity of the inner
wall (discipline) speaks for his dualism, and the gratuitousness of the owter wall (the man
made boundary) speaks for his monism. This monistic temperament of Robert Frost is
comparable to Ovid, the author of The Metamorphosis, who always considered the flux in
the universe as a perennial activity of alterations and changes, complexly revealed in the
fables that he had given in The Metamorphosis.
C. Unmending the Wall
The most important poem that speaks of Biblical metaphysical wall as a resentful
obstruction between man and God is to be found in his "Mending Wall." This poem is
very often characterized by the critics as an occasional resentment shown by Robert Frost
towards the Berlin Wall.
But on a careful analysis of the imagery of the poem, it
becomes clear that Robert Frost is making a statement of his resentment against the
autocratic Christian Godhead as the Father of Humanity. God is the creator of the world.
He is the father of the universe. The ancient Greeks have many stories of the creation of
the world.
But the Christian cosmology is being concentrated by Frost here. He invokes the
Biblical creation theory of God walling off or throwing away Adam from the Garden of
Eden. Adam had been thrown on to the Earth along with Eve. This throwing off by God,
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the Father, is a Barrier or a wall. The mytho-poetic figure of the protagonist does not like
this wall.
So to say, he does not like the idea of the Divine Father separating or
distancing man from the kingdom of Heaven. The rustic scenario with its seasonal
alterations on the earth in New England is the occasion of the poem.
With the passage of seasons, particularly after the rainy season, the Barrier
created by God or the distance imposed upon man by God gets smashed off. The onset of
rainy season is the time of germination of nature; it gets reborn. The new birth of nature
is cognate with repetition of the Original Sin consequent upon Eve's eating the fruit of
knowledge.
Frost symbolically suggests here that with the emergence of the rainy
season, an instinctive desire for knowledge through germination becomes a reality. This
emergence of desire for knowledge is Pantheistically presupposed as a trait of nature.
The whole nature aspires to unifY itself with the higher knowledge of being in the world.
This aspiration on the part of the earthly beings is not for the liking of the Divine God,
the Father, but from the man's point of view this continual manner of seasonally
depriving man of his desire to unifY himself with the God is quite resentful.
The poem itself is a monologue of""rustic of New England who had a great
A
grievance against his neighbour who always insisted upon mending the wall. But the
rustic protagonist does not like this:
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the Sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. (CP 4 7)
This hatred of wall on the part of the protagonist is understandable. This wall being a
barrier (wall) between the Heaven and the Earth, the cosmological manner of the Earth
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falling under it in the form of a 'frozen-ground-swell' clarifies that this wall is horizontal
one between the Heaven and the Earth. The 'upper boulders' are 'in the sun' and the
Earth underneath is a 'frozen-ground-swell.'
The upper boulders refer to the higher
world where the sun rules, a typical Pagan image in itself.
But, however, there are gaps in this wall, through which 'even two can pass
abreast.' Frost wants to suggest that in spite of this wall there is a complementary desire
both in God and man to encroach into the territories of one o.l\•l:kr.After all the same God
who threw Adam and his bride on to the earth, sent Jesus, His Son, to bring back the
good amongst the human beings into the Heaven. So, there is a cosmic passage between
the Heaven and the Earth in spite of this wall.
This wall should be mended every season constantly, and that is what his
neighbour insists upon. It is usual for the hunters. They build temporary walls in the
forest by way of giving the rabbits a hiding place and sending the 'yelping dogs' to catch
them. But God is not a hunter and man is not certainly a rabbit to please the 'yelping
dogs.' So the wall in the God's universe is not necessary. This point is made clear when
Frost says that the wall so insisted upon by the neighbour is only a temporary
phenomenon. It cannot really separate man from God.
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines. (CP 47)
It is very clear that his neighbour is the Christian God metamorphosed into the
stature of an anthropomorphic neighbour. The Gardener in whose garden pines grow
cannot be a human being. Pines grow in the forest and forests are the gardens of God
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only.
The protagonist neighbour is a human in whose garden there are only apple
orchards. Apple is the fruit of knowledge. It suggestively implies that the man who
grows the apple orchard is the one who constantly aspires for the forbidden fruit. His
garden is full of these forbidden fruits.
But his contention is that his neighbour who is the owner of the pines (speaks for
his hugeness) is insisting upon repairing the wall in the spring mending time, which is an
unnecessary exercise.
The great God whose gardens are full of pines need not be
apprehensive of the neighbour's apple trees trespassing into his private property. On his
own, man is not capable of trespassing into the Heaven. Even then he always says,
"Good fences make good neighbors" (CP 47).
It is all right that we have to live like good neighbours. There is no intention on
the part of man to inflict the loss to God.
But the same spring which categorically
destroys the wall between the neighbour and himself is the real mischief- maker. Spring
is a season of procreation; it seasonally inculcates in man an instinctive desire for eating
the fruit of knowledge, which is tantamount to repeating the original Sin. The poet wants
to imply that this desire for knowledge is instinctive in him and so he is not to blame.
But the passionate instinct of man forces him to establish a union with the other. If so,
the very force of instinct as a seasonal phenomenon is in the spring itself, "Spring is the
mischief in me and I wonder I Ifi could put a notion in his head" (CP 47).
This is quite a humorous termination. There is a veiled suggestion that God does
not develop instinctive curiosity of eating the fruit of knowledge. He wonders if it is
possible to put a little bit of 'notion' in the brain of God as to how it looks like eating the
fruit of knowledge.
Quite humorously Frost terminates that God cannot tolerate the
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instinctive curiosity of man for knowledge, just because of the fact that he himself does
not eat the fruit of knowledge.
In effect Frost wants to suggest that the instinctive desire for knowledge, or union
with the other, or something that is forced upon him by the spring season, again, is the
creation of God. Otherwise man is only a Good Adam, who doesn't have a notion of
transgressing the will of God. The question of good neighbours or otherwise emerges
only when there are cows in the Gardens of each other.
The cows are capable of
trespassing into the neighbour's garden. But in these gardens of the neighbours there are
no cows; there are only apples and pines. The protagonist's resentment is a metaphysical
rebellion against the Christian God who created distances and separations. He says,
"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know I What I was walling in or walling out, I And to
whom I was like to give offence" (CP 48).
This is a direct expression of his metaphysical grievance against God who insisted
on the separations. But then there is certainly a hope in the Son of God, that is Jesus,
who entered into a covenant with God that he would bring back the good into the Heaven
after the Day of Judgement. The emergence of Jesus is the only hopeful termination for
all this spiritual agony of existence. There is a visionary desire in the protagonist. A
hope comes to him
. . . I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees. (CP 48)
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The stone here refers to the bringing of religious hope. It is usual in the Bible to
refer to Christianity as a solid religion. Stone is symbolic of Christianity. The rustic
neighbour has an urgency for his arrival. He puts an empirical doubt that he is still
moving in darkness, as it seems to him. But, however, he is committed to his Father and
will not go back leaving his commitments: "He will not go behind his father's saying, I
And he likes having thought of it so well" (CP 48).
He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' Since Jesus is the Son of
God he would not transgress His orders. That is the most possible doubt he nurtures in
his mind. Even he repeats the same dictum of his Father, "Good fences make good
neighbors" (CP 48).
The poet's real grievance is that we need not be mere neighbours. We can as well
afford to be a unified pantheon of happy loving beings in the world.
This is the
Knowledge that he tries to impart to the people of the world who always segregate
themselves in the name of religions, states, nations, and all such. The real target of
Robert Frost is in the wisdom of humanity aiming at living as a unified race. Not as good
neighbours but as an affectionate brood.
Frost's metaphysical rebellion in his "Mending Wall" is not merely religious.
The religious aspect is only a figurative form which he develops into a mythological built
of a lovers quarrel. But in the ultimate sense he wants to inculcate in the humans a
poetical sense of happiness in living as unified human race by way of discarding all the
man-made barriers.
This is of course a dream. However, it is a dream worth inculcating in the minds
of people. The Biblical mythological imagery is all-important here. As a matter of fact,
Robert Frost is a sceptic, if not agnostic, so far as the religious creeds and cults are
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concerned. His intense humanism drives him to arrive at a conclusion that humanity is
under a complex need to live like one homogenous whole. In order to suggest this point
the whole mythological format is attributed to the poem "Mending Wall."
The greatest achievement of Robert Frost is that he achieves his sublime height by
way of resorting to the mythological pyrotechnics of poetic creativity. The colloquial
rustic fabric of the poem, with all its simplicity of dialogue and imagery, is deceptive.
The poem ultimately pleads for the establishment of the kingdom of Heaven on the Earth
where all men and women could afford to live like good Adams and Eves, of course with
their instinctive desires for each other intact.
It is clear that he does not consider the Original Sin seriously as a flaw or a
mistake in humanity. The instinctive desire for knowledge and interpersonal intimacy
between men and women are phenomenal features of humanity, without which all talks
of human elevations would be absolutely meaningless. His ultimate plea is that man, as
he is, should have his pride of place in the universe. No wall should obstruct and no
barrier should hold him back from being simple, sensuous, and passionate as a human
being.
1. Metaphysical Rebellion of Frost
Robert Pack, a major critic of Robert Frost, opines, "His [Frost's] poems speak
most profoundly when they speak by indirection; they are indeed dark sayings engagingly
'enigmatical' and the best of them maintain Frost's characteristic reserve" (1 5).
However, in saying so, Pack is quite vague and incomprehensive. Instead of resolving
Frost's problem of enigma of 'dark sayings,' he contributes for inflating the problem
itself. What pack here calls 'enigmatical' and 'dark sayings' is in fact the characteristic
manner of visio-centrically and phono-centrically maintaining a surface tension
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throughout the contradictory initial tentative assertions. It is his characteristic manner of
poetically creating myths. Self-contradiction on the surface is the essential manner and
life of a myth.
Jove in Greek mythology is at once a God of construction and
deconstruction.
Coming to the Christology, Jehovah is a hard task-master and his son Jesus is all
agape.
Jesus' confirming that he and his father are one, clarifies the mytho-poetic
manner when Frost says, 'There is something in me that does not like a wall.'
Precisely speaking, he and his neighbour together make, what can be called, that
one unified humanity, partaking itself simultaneously in the Heaven and on the Earth. It
is such a characteristic manner of holding paradox with thesis and antithesis being kept
on equal balances with due surface tension. But just as in the ancient Greco-Roman and
Judaeo-Christian myths, the surface contrariness in Frost gets resolved in what Pack calls
'indirection,' that is weighing the credentials of his 'dark sayings' at the level of inner
authentic conscience. After all, the whole quarrel about 'walls' is the manner of Frost's
metaphysical rebellion. If the Christian God had not vengefully created the distances,
'walls,' Frost would have permanently lost an opportunity for rebellion with which he
profoundly asserts his individual freedom in being an active living agent with absolute
awareness.
2. Metaphysical Correspondence in Frost
Frank Lentricchia's statement regarding metaphysical correspondence in Frost is
worth quoting. Says Lentricchia, "Frost claims neither explicitly nor implicitly that his
resolutions have a metaphysical correspondence in the nature of things, nor that they can
work for anyone else" (26). The metaphysical correspondence in Frost is not in the
nature of analogies or parallels. They are delicately pointed at, just like the needle in the
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compass directs itself to north. The metaphysical postulates are so tenuously implicit that
the casual reader misses the point altogether. Almost all the poems (they are many) in
which he celebrates the journey, the metaphysical intentions are prominent. What else is
more metaphysical than the utterly fearing faith in the mysterious inscrutable forces of
nature and cosmos?
However, as a sceptic he always keeps his metaphysical poetic
postulates in equal balances with scepticism, criticism, and opposition, as though he, as a
troubled and tortured self, proposes himself as a non-believer and agnostic. It is in
hinting at the ancient myths quite delicately that he proposes himself as the most troubled
poet, and the troubled nature of Robert Frost is available in the metaphysical manner of
his "A Masque of Mercy" and "A Masque of Reason."
The veiled mytho-poetic fabric of the important poems as "The Death of a Hired
Man," "The Black Cottage," "Home Burial_;' is meticulously avoided by Lentricchia. In
order to stick on to his pet thesis of Frost's Redemptive Imagination, Lentricchia for a
while blissfully forgets that the myth of sin, realization, repentance, and redemption is the
Catholic Christological formula. In isolating Redemption from its canonical context,
Lentricchia stoops to critical misguidance. Thereby he arrives at a miscalculation that
"'Mending Wall' dramatizes the redemptive imagination in its playful phase, guided
surely and confidently by a man who has his world under full control, who in his serenity
is riding his relatives, not being shocked by them into traumatic response" (26). The
expressions like 'playful phase,' 'world under full control,' 'riding his relatives,' and 'not
being shocked' expose the simplistic manner in which Lentricchia comprehends the
poem. The other who is insisting on mending the wall periodically is the one who had
walled off man by throwing him on to the Earth.
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The true metaphysical mytho-poetic dimensions of the neighbour who says 'Good
fences make good neighbours' is constantly reminding man about the distances to be
maintained by man until, probably, the Doomsday.
The identification of the unnamed 'neighbor ... beyond the hill' as Jehovah is not
difficult, if we notice that 'He is all pine.' Pine is a huge forest tree and it is there only in
the God's garden, that is}he forest. The words of Marie Boroff are worth quoting in this
context. Says Boroff, "Of major importance are the associations with Christian ethic of
the word neighbour, notably in the parable of the Good Samaritan with its final question,
'Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the
thieves' (Luke 10:36)" (64).
Frost's neighbour in "Mending Wall," being a rival to the protagonist suggests at
the injustice the Christological God thrusts on man. To that extent he is inimical to the
cause of man. The expression 'neighbor ... beyond the hill' is quite intriguing. In its
plain sense, the neighbour, originally a native of some other place, came and established
a farm by the side of the protagonist's farm. But the preposition 'beyond' has many
shades of meanings. Chamber's dictionary gives the following meanings to the word
'beyond': "Beyond (prep.)-'on the farther side of: 'farther onward in comparison with':
'out of reach of: 'above', 'superior to': 'apart from'. adv. 'farther away,'. n. the
unknown: 'the hereafter'."
The meanings 'out of reach of and 'above' are important for our purpose. The
neighbour is 'out of reach of or 'above' the hill. This 'out of reach of or 'above the hill'
points at Heaven that is out of the reach of or 'above the hill.' Marie Boroff rightly
points out that in Frost "A more interesting reflection of simplicity or difficulty in
language may be found in word origins" (64).
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The 'mine are apples, his are all pines' clarifies the personalities of man and God.
Precisely man does not want to be a neighbour good or bad. He wants to be an inmate,
an equal interior sharer of Heaven along with God. That is what it is promised by the
Son of God, anyway, according to the Bible. Therefore, 'There is something in me that
does not like a wall.' If so, it is not certainly a 'playful phase,' nor does man have his
'world' under his 'full control.' The protagonist is certainly shocked and the same is
available in his grievance-filled rhetoric. He says, "He is all pine and I am apple orchard I
My apple trees will never get across I And eat the cones under his pines" (CP 47).
But his neighbour does not see reason in his argument. In stating that 'I am apple
orchard' Frost intends a mild fun. Having eaten the fruit of knowledge, Eve probably
brought the seeds of the forbidden fruit also to earth along with her. So, there are no
apples in Heaven.
'My apple trees will never get across I And eat the cones under his
pines.' It means that there is no more possibility of the tree of knowledge corrupting the
Heaven. Instead of advancing the Day of Judgement, he only says 'Good fences make
good neighbors'; a merciless God indeed. In the wall there are gaps 'even two can pass
abreast.' The sun makes these gaps after spilling the upper boulders. Two (that is, man
and God) can pass abreast through the gaps. The protagonist's ultimate imploration is
that the gaps in the wall be kept intact. But Jehovah, as what he is, dictates 'Good fences
make good neighbors.' Why good neighbours? Why not good inmates? That is the
metaphysical question that Frost puts forth.
Therein starts his metaphysical rebellion
with a tribal fury :
Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
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What I was walling in or walling out (CP 47- 48)
There are no cows. That is, there are no animals and beasts. It implies that there
are human beings. If so, 'To whom I was like to give offence?' Most certainly, it is to
Jehovah in Heaven.
Frost cherishes here what William Blake proposed in his pet
metaphysical concept, the marriage of the Heaven and the Earth. Lentricchia again
commits a blunder in stating, ";· .. we are in a fictive world where walls go tumbling for
mysterious reasons, it should be for human and divine reasons, in so far as they have a
common world and interest to share." (26). The problem with Lentricchia is that he is too
much under the influence of Wallace Stevens and his 'Necessary Angel' which,
according to Stevens, is "Supreme Fiction" (1655), a modem mythology he offered in
place of the mythologies of the past.
By the way, Stevens' 'Necessary Angel' is
imagination itself.
Again, in the efforts of the hunters to 'please the yelping dogs,' "by pulling apart
the stones behind which a rabbit has taken refuge" (65) to borrow the words of Marie
Boroff, has a suggestive reference to the dogs born of sin and Satan. In Milton's
Paradise Lost, Book II, we have that, Satan and his brood may have to be walled off, but
not the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.
Marie Boroff is at pains to suggest that "the use of spells to make the replaced
stones where they are, evokes a superstitious past" (65). She further says, "so, to the
'darkness .. . I Not of woods only and the shade of trees' in which the neighbour figure is
finally seen implies, in context, a benighted era prior to the establishment of amicable
social bonds" (65-66).
Boroff alone knows that 'benighted era prior to the establishment of amicable
social bonds" was there, without the woods and shades of trees. It is not the 'superstitious
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(_human) past' or the primaeval human times in the historical past of the created world.
There is a direct suggestion towards the Biblical mythological past, when spell in the
sense of miracles were common; and 'the darkness not of woods only and the shade of
trees' confirms the miracles (spells) with the suggested reference to Genesis. There we
have "In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth. 2. And the Earth was without
form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep" (Gen. 1: l-2).
So, Frost is referring to this primaeval darkness that was before the light was
created. "And God said let there be light in the firmament of the Heaven to divide the
day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years"
(Gen. 1:14).
A poem should start in delight (discovery of the other) and end in wisdom
(uncovering of the self). Frost delivers us from the hazards and pains of being-in-theworld by way of offering a leap into being-in-the-universe. Being-in-the-world may be a
matter of delight or otherwise but being-in-the-universe is invariably a matter of gaining
the most wanted wisdom. The next chapter deals with the philosophy of being-in-theworld versus being-in-the-universe in Frost.