Mending Wall - Robert Frost Themes analysis

Do you like to keep yourself separate from others, needing your own space? Or do you feel we put too much distance between one another? Frost explores both views.

Like many of Frost’s poems, Mending Wall is set in the countryside, focusing on two men who have met up to mend the wall that separates their land. This is an annual job – “spring mending-time”, and requires them to repair the damage that nature has spent the rest of the year inflicting upon the man-made structure:

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. (1 – 4)

Interestingly, it is the narrator of the poem who approaches his neighbour to remind him that it is time to complete the task – “I let my neighbour know” – as later in the poem he is the one who questions the need to have such a wall between them.

Irony in Mending Walls

There is great irony in the way the two men are brought together by a task that will keep them apart, and the lexical choices stress that they never actually work together. Instead, they each complete the work on their own side of the wall, never meeting or co-operating:

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each... (14 – 15)

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. (21 – 22)

The speaker is clearly aware of this irony, and of the essentially pointless nature of the task: not only does it need doing “once again”, emphasizing that all the work they do every year will be undone by the following spring, but the speaker seems unsure whether they really need the wall at all:

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, I tell him. (23 – 26)

In other words, both men only have trees rather than animals which need a boundary to stop them from straying, and the speaker’s sarcastic tone indicates his impatience with the whole situation.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Meanwhile, his neighbour refuses to even discuss the wall, simply stating every time questioned that “Good fences make good neighbours.” The end of the poem reveals that this is his “father’s saying” – the neighbour is traditional in outlook, and as his family have always had a wall here, so he will continue to maintain that custom. The speaker sees this as ignorance, and a refusal to move forward and acknowledge that times have changed:

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... (38 – 41)

The American Dream

The neighbour is, of course, following the idea of the American Dream: his own patch of land, carefully defined and delineated, upon which he may work hard to ensure his own future. For the speaker of the poem, however, the possibility of human interaction and co-operation is more important:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense. (32 – 35)

A Compromise?

So are we free to make up our own minds here which neighbour is right? After all, the two key repeated lines in the poem are those which represent the viewpoint of each man: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” and “Good fences make good neighbours”. The poem is written in first person, making it hard not to sympathize with the views of the speaker and his annoyance at his old-fashioned neighbour, but ultimately by acknowledging both views the poem suggests a middle ground is possible: perhaps that occupied by the wall itself.

"Mending Wall" - Robert Frost

Every year, two neighbors meet to repair the stone wall that divides their property. The narrator is skeptical of this tradition, unable to understand the need for a wall when there is no livestock to be contained on the property, only apples and pine trees. He does not believe that a wall should exist simply for the sake of existing. Moreover, he cannot help but notice that the natural world seems to dislike the wall as much as he does: mysterious gaps appear, boulders fall for no reason. The neighbor, on the other hand, asserts that the wall is crucial to maintaining their relationship, asserting, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Over the course of the mending, the narrator attempts to convince his neighbor otherwise and accuses him of being old-fashioned for maintaining the tradition so strictly. No matter what the narrator says, though, the neighbor stands his ground, repeating only: “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Analysis

This poem is the first work in Frost's second book of poetry, “North of Boston,” which was published upon his return from England in 1915. While living in England with his family, Frost was exceptionally homesick for the farm in New Hampshire where he had lived with his wife from 1900 to 1909. Despite the eventual failure of the farm, Frost associated his time in New Hampshire with a peaceful, rural sensibility that he instilled in the majority of his subsequent poems. “Mending Wall” is autobiographical on an even more specific level: a French-Canadian named Napoleon Guay had been Frost’s neighbor in New Hampshire, and the two had often walked along their property line and repaired the wall that separated their land. Ironically, the most famous line of the poem (“Good fences make good neighbors”) was not invented by Frost himself, but was rather a phrase that Guay frequently declared to Frost during their walks. This particular adage was a popular colonial proverb in the middle of the 17th century, but variations of it also appeared in Norway (“There must be a fence between good neighbors”), Germany (“Between neighbor’s gardens a fence is good”), Japan (“Build a fence even between intimate friends”), and even India (“Love your neighbor, but do not throw down the dividing wall”).

In terms of form, “Mending Wall” is not structured with stanzas; it is a simple forty-five lines of first-person narrative. Frost does maintain iambic stresses, but he is flexible with the form in order to maintain the conversational feel of the poem. He also shies away from any obvious rhyme patterns and instead relies upon the occasional internal rhyme and the use of assonance in certain ending terms (such as “wall,” “hill,” “balls,” “well”).

In the poem itself, Frost creates two distinct characters who have different ideas about what exactly makes a person a good neighbor. The narrator deplores his neighbor’s preoccupation with repairing the wall; he views it as old-fashioned and even archaic. After all, he quips, his apples are not going to invade the property of his neighbor’s pinecones. Moreover, within a land of such of such freedom and discovery, the narrator asks, are such borders necessary to maintain relationships between people? Despite the narrator’s skeptical view of the wall, the neighbor maintains his seemingly “old-fashioned” mentality, responding to each of the narrator’s disgruntled questions and rationalizations with nothing more than the adage: “Good fences make good neighbors.”

As the narrator points out, the very act of mending the wall seems to be in opposition to nature. Every year, stones are dislodged and gaps suddenly appear, all without explanation. Every year, the two neighbors fill the gaps and replace the fallen boulders, only to have parts of the wall fall over again in the coming months. It seems as if nature is attempting to destroy the barriers that man has created on the land, even as man continues to repair the barriers, simply out of habit and tradition.

Ironically, while the narrator seems to begrudge the annual repairing of the wall, Frost subtley points out that the narrator is actually more active than the neighbor. It is the narrator who selects the day for mending and informs his neighbor across the property. Moreover, the narrator himself walks along the wall at other points during the year in order to repair the damage that has been done by local hunters. Despite his skeptical attitude, it seems that the narrator is even more tied to the tradition of wall-mending than his neighbor. Perhaps his skeptical questions and quips can then be read as an attempt to justify his own behavior to himself. While he chooses to present himself as a modern man, far beyond old-fashioned traditions, the narrator is really no different from his neighbor: he too clings to the concept of property and division, of ownership and individuality.

Ultimately, the presence of the wall between the properties does ensure a quality relationship between the two neighbors. By maintaining the division between the properties, the narrator and his neighbor are able to maintain their individuality and personal identity as farmers: one of apple trees, and one of pine trees. Moreover, the annual act of mending the wall also provides an opportunity for the two men to interact and communicate with each other, an event that might not otherwise occur in an isolated rural environment. The act of meeting to repair the wall allows the two men to develop their relationship and the overall community far more than if each maintained their isolation on separate properties.

A Literary Analysis of Nadine Gordimer’s “Once Upon a Time” By Emily Hines

Author’s Note ::  If you have not read this short story, you need to.  As the following essay portrays, it is an extremely shocking bit of literature.  Since I did not go into detail of plot line here, if you have any questions you can ask me and I will certainly find the answer to give you.

In Nadine Gordimer’s “Once Upon a Time”, the most important element is its theme.  The entire story is set about telling its readers that human beings create their own destruction.  The setting of the two parts of the story is important as well as the ironic structure presented.  Suspense and tone also add to the final effect.  All this is brought together to leave readers shocked, ready to rethink the importance of things in their own lives.

The story begins with the author presenting a situation in which great fear exists.  She hears a noise and is afraid of a burglar or murder inside her house.  However, she soon comes to realize that her fear was not something real, but that the noise causing her fear was really just the shifting of the earth. The setting is important here in creating an atmosphere of dread which each human has experienced at one time in their life.  If the terror had ensued at a time during the day instead of the night, then it might have produced a more comical affect as opposed to the fright shared with the audience.  It pulls the reader into the story so that when the second part hits, the reader is completely engaged in the author’s sardonic telling of a fairy tale.

This fairy tale in itself is ironic due to the fact hat the very first paragraph of the entire story is dedicated to the author’s refusal to write a story for children.  Another situation of irony is presented in that the only thing relating the author’s tale to that of a children’s story is the setting.  A happy family in a “perfect” little suburb makes it seem like a story for children, but by the time the story finds its end, readers are left completely shocked.

Irony adds to this final affect in that everything the parents do to protect heir home becomes useless.  The gate speaker is used by the boy for a walkie-talkie.  The alarm is set off, but no one cares.  The high wall is mocked by the cat jumping over it.  The ultimate destruction is obvious when the boy is killed by the barbed wire.  All these precaution, things the characters thought they would die without, instead bring on unseen death.

This death, added to by the person vs. self conflict and sarcastic tone of the author, creates the theme of the entire piece.  This theme’s impact is even more great and shocking upon a second reading of the story.  The repetition of “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED” stands to tell readers that this story is in fact warning them that with each move they make they build their own prison and bring on their own destruction.

"Once Upon a Time" by Nadine Gordimer - Theme

"...he dragged a ladder to the wall, the shining coiled tunnel was just wide enough for his little body too creep in, and with the first fixing of its razor-teeth in his knees and hands and head he screamed and struggled deeper into its tangle." (pg. 236)

The theme of this story is that there are so many dangers lurking in our world, and it is impossible to guard against them, so we can't live in fear. In the story, there are an infinite number of things that threaten the family. The parents and everyone in the neighborhood are so scared, that they build walls and fences around their homes. While this may or may not keep them safe, it does increase the paranoia and destroys the beauty of the neighborhood. The family no longer sees the beautiful lawns and elegant homes, but instead they observe which protections seems to be the most efficient. In the final paragraph, the little boy reads a story of a fearless prince, and he aspires to be like this, so he attempts to battle barbed wire, which his parents installed out of fear. The irony of this plot twist refers to the theme. By living in fear, the family created a new danger.

Dream Deferred -Langston Hughes(1902-1967)

Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

—Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Langston Hughes, one of the leaders of the early 1900s Harlem Renaissance, pushed the “black experience” beyond segregation and discrimination—from the back of the bus to front of the anthologies. His poems are read and enjoyed in classrooms throughout the country to this day. So pervasive has been the influence of his work, the line, “a raisin in the sun,” became the title of the acclaimed play by Lorraine Hansberry. 

“What happens to a dream deferred?”

“What happens” suggests that dreams just sit around and wait. Dreams do not exist in and of themselves, but are the product and profession of another, in the febrile mind of a fun man, or the feverish demand of a weak personality.“Defer” at its core signals difference and delay, and dreams inevitably contain the germ of tardiness, or otherwise they would not be dreams, but present and apparent realities.

Dream deferred, the alliteration of noun and verb, announces the start and finish of this poem, the central goal of all that is taking place in this poem.

Yet what does happen to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?

A raisin in the sun, rays in the sun—the sun’s rays make the grape more sweet, more tough. Raisins last a long time and do not go bad. 

In the Bible, raisins are a sensuous source of strength: “Stay me with flagons [lit. raisin cakes], comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.” (Song of Solomon 2:5)

Raisins speak of sustenance, restoration, the culmination of great joy; just as time must pass for the grape to dry into a more delicious fruit.

Or fester like a sore—
And then run?

A sore that festers—what a ghastly sight! This grim image imparts to the reader the lingering pain of a dream that waits to be realized, that waits to take place, that waits and waits, and then it runs. Yet in so sickening a sight, the notion of a “running sore” indirectly implies life and opportunity. A sore that runs is a mess that heals, and in the same vein, a dream deferred will not remain ignored, but will break forth in the life of a man.

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Rotten meat, stinking like the sore, is waiting to be thrown away. Yet meat that rots, meat the stinks, is meat in which new life also lives. For what makes this stench so strong is the new creation of airborne life landing on a piece of flesh. Does the poet see this life? Does he see the seething meat as anything more than an eyesore?

Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Now the poet rhymes meat with sweet. So much time is spent on the sound “ee”—is the dream, then, something to eat? Or does the dream still eat at the dreamer? “Crust,” a covering, protects the dream. “Sugar over” the crust is and does, a symbol both active and passive, that the “dream deferred” is neither lost nor forlorn. The dream gets bigger, gets smaller, but will not be static and stay still.

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

A dream that sags will not be still. The dream will not stay, like the smell, good or bad, that flies invisible from the sore, the meat, or the raisins so sweet. Is this heavy load a burden that goes nowhere? The dream is a saggy dream that does more than “just” nothing—only this bag “justly” sags.

Or does it explode?

Dreams that explode, come to pass, or pass through mind and heart, pressing past the staunch, stench sticking to the walls. The raisin does not explode, except in the mouth of a dry and weary traveler, renews his strength, gives him ease for the journey. The dream is now alive, refused to be put away. Not rotten, not running, not run down, but ready to be read.

“Dream Deferred” draws out the dreams deferred in a reader. When the poet poses the question, the reader goes from wondering to pondering. The poem says a lot, like the rotting meat, teeming with life while seeming lifeless, like the dream that waits to be realized. 

The poem is so sweet, so juicy, unlike the dry raisin, yet just as tasty. The little poem backs a big, bomb punch, “explodes” in the mind, and beckons deferred dreams to fruition.