Robert Frost
MENDING WALL
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First person – Frost himself seems to be the speaker or takes on a persona
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No stanza division – suitable for its discursive chattiness
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Narrator’s ruminations contrast with neighbour’s terseness- digresses, asks questions,
repeats self, makes suppositions
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Regularly ten beats and five stresses per line
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But not iambic – Frost varies where stress falls
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This captures natural speech-like quality
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Example – syntactical inversion of “Something there is…”
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Example – tumble of ideas and verbs in lines 2 -4 – “That sends…” and “And spills…”
and “And makes…” = conversational tone
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Lexis simple, mostly monosyllabic words, also contributes to this anecdotal feel
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“Another” = only three-syllabled word
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Lexis familiar and accessible
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Colloquial contractions – “doesn’t, “I’d”, “it’s”
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No end-rhymes
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Sporadic half-rhymes:Sun, stone, mean
Them, game, him
Well, wall, hill
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American spellings – “neighbor”, “offense”
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Wordplay or pun on “offense”
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Opening line with its syntactical inversion and cryptic suggestion contrasts with, and
contradicts, closing line, repeating neighbour’s platitude
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= Laconic, symmetrical five-worded maxim “Good fences make good neighbours”
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Neighbour seems to hide behind its triteness, seeming to reinforce how illogical it is
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It’s hackneyed and old – his “father’s saying”
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Frost, classics student, aware of these two links:o
Sisyphus, in Greek mythology, condemned to push boulder up hill perpetually:
when finished, it rolled down again
(Mending this wall is a repetitive, Sisyphean task – Elements and human beings
conspire against them to ensure that they will perpetually be carrying stones to the
wall)
© 2005 www.teachit.co.uk
4645.doc
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Robert Frost
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In ancient Rome, there was an annual festival at boundaries, where neighbours
would meet to celebrate their existence
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Central paradox of poem: two men meet on civil, neighbourly terms in order to build a
wall between them
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Ambiguity of poem’s attitudes and values
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Seems to be mocking neighbour’s irrationality and slavery to the ritual
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But Frost, when discussing this poem, made clear his belief that “Life is composed of
cells. Life is cells breaking down and building up.” = Life’s “fences” are always changing
but are needed for structure
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Speaker:makes repairs when alone
is one who contacts neighbour and initiates the wall-mending
believes in need for walls elsewhere “where there are cows”
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= seems to believe in need to mend them, maintenance of the status quo
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Ancient need for boundaries = sign of civilisation and order
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Metaphorically = rules, laws, expectations, codes of behaviour, rights
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Frost always had boundaries, structures and order in his poems
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“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”, actually and simply =
Frost (natural)
Hunters (mankind)
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But playful, mischievous, riddling phrasing of opening line, later repeated, phrasing hints
at something magical – “elves”?
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So – are malevolent forces at work destroying wall, attempting to bring return of
anarchy?
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Or – are benevolent forces at work, attempting to unite communities, stop segregation?
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President J.F. Kennedy quoted opening line when inspecting Berlin Wall
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Is repairing the wall creative or destructive?
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Ancient and primitive associations of wall-building conveyed in “old stone savage”
moving in “darkness”
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References to cycle of seasons – “once again”, “frozen”, “spring is the mischief in me”
© 2005 www.teachit.co.uk
4645.doc
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