Mending Wall

In Mending Wall by Robert Frost, the reader sees an overall picture of a wall separating two neighbors and their properties. Both neighbors have opposing views on this wall. Mending Wall is a fairly easy poem to read and straight-forward, almost as if it more of a short-story. Its great though. For example, it is real easy for the reader to picture the two men "mending" the wall. The first ten lines are full of very vivid words, even though the whole poem is filled with imagery. For example, "frozen-ground" (line 2),"upper boulders in the sun"(line 3),"yelping dogs"(line 8), point very descriptive pictures in the reader's mind.
Once the narrartor begins talking about the labor of the wall, the reader can fully understand how labor intensive it is. "But at spring mending-time we find them"(line 10), them being the gaps to repair. This quote is at least for the reader, the main starting point of the poem. Now, both men start the tedious "mending" of the wall. The reader really can almost feel how hard it is to fix this wall, due to the vivid description Frost displays. However the reader also begins to see how this wall is really the only thing that these men have in common. The wall brings both of them together at a certain time, leading them to work toghther to fix the problem they face. This coming togther of the neighbors brings us the the most emphasized line of the poem, "Good fences make good neighbors"(line 27). As the poem moves on and the men continue to work on the wall, the reader starts to see the differences in them. "We keep the wall between us as we go"(line 14), the reader can see here there is litterally a wall between them however mentally they think and want different. Another quote to exemplify this difference between the men is "He is all pine and I am apple orchard."(line 24) The poem displays a real sense of segregation, and could be contrasting the idea of segration in society.
In conclusion this poem weighs heavily on the differences of these two mens. One wants the "wall" down while the other sees it as, "Good fences make good neighbors". The narrator is and will not be convinced of this. The narrator sees the wall as a dark-age mentality.


3 Defintions:

Abreast:side by side; beside each other in a line
Whithered:to shrivel; fade; decay: Poem-Birches-line 14
trodden:to set down the foot or feet in walking; step; walk.-Poem-The road not taken-line 11