Allen 1 The Ease of Mending Walls and the Difficulty of Changing Men
Readers of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” often find it as fascinating as they do
mysterious. Frost weaves in layers of irony and criticism that only seem to become more deep
and convoluted as they are explored. For this very reason the poem has been subjected to
practically incessant analysis in the near-century since its publication. Reoccurring focuses in
this veritable sea of analysis include the enigmatic relationships of the speaker to his neighbor,
the wall, and himself, and the strange stasis these have achieved. Further inspection of these
issues reveals the wall’s role, both physically and metaphysically, as Frost’s vehicle for nature’s
rejection of the man-made boundaries of tradition and society, despite man’s hesitance to
change. Published on the eve of World War I, the poem perhaps also serves as a criticism of
traditional problem solving practices. Instead of unifying under the violent pretense of war and
rebuilding all of the mindsets that brought us here, why not try something different? Perhaps
rethinking the very mindsets we sought to defend? The notion of nature rejecting man’s walls is
demonstrated most predominantly through the action of breaking walls; although readers do not
witness the wall being destroyed directly in the text, they do see the aftermath first-hand and are
given front-row seats as an engaged and playful speaker copes with that damage to the wall and
its corresponding social paradigms.
The speaker in “Mending Wall” is caught in an interesting and paradoxical internal
conflict throughout the poem. Despite his obvious efforts to rebuild the wall after a winter of
collapse, he “allies himself with the insubordinate energies of spring, which yearly destroy the
wall,” or perhaps, attempts to ally himself with those destructive energies (Richardson). “Spring
is the mischief in me… / Before I built a wall I'd ask to know / What I was walling in or walling
out” (Frost 28, 32-33). Even though he follows through with the spring mending, he sees a
Allen 2 certain value in the destruction of the wall, a value that is echoed by other players in the poem.
Firstly, the ground swelling produced by the freezing of highly moisturized soil throughout the
winter and the influx of moisture caused by melting snow in the spring serve as nature’s primary
line of offense against the wall (Gunn 160). In fact, Frost opens his poem by observing this
attack on the wall: “Something there is... / That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, / And
spills the upper boulders in the sun” (Frost 1-3). This invisible force represents nature’s initial
and very literal rejection of boundaries imposed by humans. The hunters Frost describes serve to
assist nature’s destruction of the wall as well. In order to “please the yelping dogs” and scare a
“rabbit out of hiding” they would knock over boulders on the wall until there was “not one stone
on a stone” (7-9). Finally, the speaker’s own opposition to the wall is evident, “Something there
is that doesn’t love a wall, / That wants it down” (35-36) he thinks to himself. The speaker seems
to exist in a perpetual state of conflict since he apparently wants the wall down, yet initiates the
repairs with his neighbor in spring mending time (12). Perhaps a partial explanation of his
actions lies in the paradoxical existence of the wall.
The wall, which has presumably stood since before the speaker lived on his property,
exists in a state of limbo between menace and necessity. “The wall holds things together by
keeping things apart” (Kearns 36). Throughout the poem it serves as both a point of contention
and unification. Physically, the wall is a structure erected from stones and boulders of various
sizes on the line of two adjacent properties. It is the fence that makes “good neighbours” (Frost
27). The speaker, in his spring mischief, mocks this mantra by criticizing the act of mending as
an unnecessary game and the wall as a barrier separating imaginary foes. “Oh, just another kind
of out-door game, / … It comes to little more,” says the speaker (21-22). This wall, so tediously
attended to, is equated to little more than a tennis or badminton net, yet the neighbor somberly
Allen 3 treats his interactions regarding the wall with closed-minded dedication and the saying of his
father, “Good fences make good neighbours” (27). A few lines later the speaker once again
ridicules he and his neighbor’s senseless spring mending through an observation about the trees
that grow on either’s land. “My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his
pines,” he says (25-26). The statement reads as a joke and is certainly meant to incite humor
through the absurd personification of predatory apples and their pinecone prey. This criticism is
especially acute since the narrator is not threatened by the potential intrusion of worthless pines
into his valuable apple orchard. Yet there is an element in his quip that suggests a hint of
something more serious; a neighborly tension exists, however cleverly it is disguised in seasonal
pleasantries and wall-mending. The neighbor doesn’t laugh at the speaker’s wit, instead he once
again clings firmly to his father’s old saying about good fences. Metaphysically, the wall exists
as a kind of lens to a by-gone time as well as a more complex relational barrier between
neighbors. Certainly it draws ancient and magical themes into the poem. The speaker and his
neighbor “have to use a spell to make [the stones] balance”, the speaker also sees his neighbor at
the end of the poem as an “old-stone savage”, and he almost brings up the subject of elves (18,
40, 36). These antiquated notions of fantasy and folklore seem to suggest the fallacy of the wall.
Instead of the useful barrier it perhaps once was, it now exists only as an irrelevant anachronism
in a world that has long since moved onward. In terms of relationships, the wall’s only asset is
that its annual destruction strengthens each neighbor’s commitment to mending it. The desire for
separation is the face of their unity. It certainly begs an interesting question: “Were walls and
fences instrumental in the retention and renewal of human relationships?” (Montiero). Rachel
Buxton sums up the existence of Frost’s wall nicely: “‘Mending Wall’ is a poem of division as
well as alliance… The line of demarcation clearly serves not only as a division between the
Allen 4 speaker and his neighbor but also as a declaration against that swelling ‘something’ which
‘doesn’t love a wall’…” (Buxton 70) The internal conflict of the speaker deepens as the mending
of the wall becomes a way to fight that part of him that doesn’t love a wall, however
unsuccessful that fight may be since he returns to repair it and face that same “something” year
after year. The wall is a persistent and formidable foe.
On the most basic level, nature is relentless and determined, even if slow, in its objection
of man-made boundaries. The wall is a barrier between two neighbors that will crumble every
winter, invariably separating them while simultaneously bringing them together. Nature’s efforts
are to destroy this social trap. The speaker is forced, whether through the mischief spring brings
or the reliability of each winter’s destruction (either way by the invisible hand of nature), to
question the importance of the wall’s very existence as well as the importance of good fences to
good neighbors (Frost 28, 30). By extension, the importance of outdated, conventional
boundaries to contemporary social structures is also under scrutiny. Readers discover that the
“something” of line 1, the winter ground swelling, and the “something” of line 35, the part of his
nature that rejects the wall, are intimately linked through Frost’s repetition of the phrase
“something there is that doesn’t love a wall” (1, 35). They are essentially one in the same, a force
of nature that objects to walls. The demur that the speaker acknowledges within himself on line
35 is in direct response to the notion that a wall gives offense in the “walling in or walling out”
of someone (33). The separation created by the wall is objectionable, not only as a physical
separation, but also because it extends to interpersonal relationships, as shown through the
tension between the speaker and his neighbor (34, 33). They do not speak candidly to each other;
the speaker operates passive-aggressively by trying to “put a notion in his head” and wishing “he
said it for himself” instead of just speaking his mind plainly (29, 38). This kind of behavior does
Allen 5 not reflect on a healthy interaction between neighbors, but instead suggests that the two parties
exist on unequal planes, one relating to the other as an inferior who cannot be frank without the
risk of disapproval or reprimand. This is clearly demonstrated when the neighbor first states that
“good fences make good neighbours” in response to the speaker’s pine cone joke. The
neighbor’s response doesn’t even bother to directly address what the speaker said and so serves
as a rejection and blunt rebuke to the speaker. The wall represents social paradigms to such an
extent that it has even been used as a instructional tool for the teaching of economics: “I often
use “Mending Wall” … it deals with a basic institution of market economies, private property,
that is not a concept that economists normally graph or measure and analyze in other quantitative
ways” (Watts 189). It is “a pragmatic evaluation of costs and benefits, which closely parallels
Ronald Coase's discussion of when it will or will not pay to build a wall or fence” (186). All the
while, as economists banter over the cost efficiency of a barrier, winter chips away at the wall’s
foundation and the speaker’s belief in walls. As much as it represents social models, the wall is
also a symbol of outdated traditions.
The very act of spring mending is a tradition sorely in need of change. John Timmerman
describes it as “a meeting between two neighbors, of different dispositions and interests, in one
common but necessary act,” meanwhile, “the decidedly more playful narrator wonders why the
act of rebuilding is necessary at all” (Timmerman 116). “The neighbor, after all, represents a
long tradition, unchallenged and unchanged,” and he is defined by his father’s “neighborly”
mantra (117). The final image in the poem, as a definitive blow against the dangers of tradition,
is of the neighbor as a Neanderthal mindlessly moving stones and chanting the dated saying of
his ancestors. “…The proverb's message is sanctioned by tradition, the poet's neighbor can retreat to safety: Resorting to a proverb enables him, moreover, to have the last word in the Allen 6 exchange… The neighbor employs his proverb to win his point, even as it is employed in some African tribes … where participants are allowed to use proverbs in litigation” (Montiero). Even the hunters’ destruction of the wall through the traditional activity of rabbit hunting could be viewed as a response to that deeply ingrained part of them that wants it down. It would be easy enough for them to avoid the wall or quickly repair the pieces that they disturb, but they do not. Instead, they assist nature in the destruction of the wall.
The narrator quickly recognizes and acknowledges the fault in finding safety in tradition: “he
dares question the tradition itself (30–36). He feels uneasy both with walls and with seeing things
only one way” (Timmerman 117). That something in him that doesn’t love a wall has spurred a
new line of thought, or at least begged him to explore a possible paradigm shift within himself.
Tradition, therefore, is no longer a wholly relevant mindset for relating to the wall since the wall
demands so consistently to be heard and some part of him yearns to listen to it.
Twice the speaker acknowledges “something” that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it
down, yet he takes no action to that effect. There is an inherit safety provided by the wall; he
desires to repair it when it breaks. The wall really does serve to bring the two neighbors together
even though it keeps them apart. Without it, would there be any interaction between them at all?
There is comfort in knowing that every spring he will walk the wall with his neighbor and busy
himself with its repairs. This habit imbeds a certain safety within the speaker. Unfortunately, he
still has something nagging at him to take the wall down. His desire to repair it is perhaps as
strong as his desire to demolish it. He is torn between nature and culture. The speaker’s constant
criticism of his neighbor’s slave-like dedication to tradition serves as an even harsher criticism of
himself. He identifies the issues he has with the wall. He recognizes a part of himself that wants
it down, yet it is he that never takes action. Whatever feelings he has about his neighbor must be
Allen 7 magnified upon himself. As much as his neighbor is an “old-stone savage” repeating his father’s
proverb like a broken record, how much more is he? With a burning desire for change he too lifts
the stones from his property and back onto the wall in the darkness, repeating again and again in
his mind, “something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” He “likes having thought of it so well” as
much as his neighbor does his own chant (Frost 44). Frost is unearthing some keen insight about
humanity’s condition and our difficulty overcoming the bonds that tradition and society so
plainly place on us. To him, change is not necessarily achieved by merely recognizing the need
for it. Recognition is certainly a step, but there is another element required, an element Frost very
cleverly neglects to identify or even directly acknowledge. In no surprising turn of events, some
of the poem’s most important elements are found in things it doesn’t even bother to address.
What is change and how can man achieve it? Indeed, this question rang as true at the onset of
World War I as it does today.
Allen 8 Works Cited
Buxton, Rachel. Robert Frost and Northern Irish Poetry. Oxford, England: Clarendon, 2004.
Questia School. 70. Print.
Frost, Robert. "Mending Wall." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol. D. New
York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 232. Print.
Gunn, Angus M. The Impact of Geology on the United States: A Reference Guide to Benefits and
Hazards. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001. 160. Print.
Kearns, Katherine. "Frost on the Doorstep and Lyricism at the Millennium." Roads Not Taken:
Rereading Robert Frost. Ed. Earl J. Wilcox and Jonathan N. Barron. Columbia, MO:
University of Missouri, 2000. 36. Print.
Montiero, George. “Unlinked Myth in Frost’s ‘Mending Wall.’” Concerning Poetry 7.2 (1974):
10-11.
Richardson, Mark. The Ordeal of Robert Frost: The Poet and His Poetics. Urbana: University of
Illinois, 1997. Print.
Timmerman, John H. Robert Frost: The Ethics of Ambiguity. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP,
2002. 116-118. Print.
Watts, Michael. "Chapter 9: Using Literature and Drama in Undergraduate Economics Courses."
Teaching Economics to Undergraduates: Alternatives to Chalk and Talk. Ed. William E.
Becker and Michael Watts. Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar, 1998. 186-189. Print.