Mending Wall Case
“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost
The harsh reality of life is that many of us put up walls for no reason other than we were told by someone, or it was passed down from generation to generation without question. We will erect walls around types of people, places, religion, and things without understanding why we even do it. “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost portrays a view that we are seeing today around the world. So many groups of people all walled off from each other, and it does not allow them to become friends or to understand each other’s culture. When the wall comes down, people figure out that all of us want the same things out of life.
Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” is about walls that people set up for no reason whatsoever. Frosty shows quickly that there is something wrong when he begins the point with “something there is that does not love a wall” (563). The poem tells the story of two landowners who appear to be following a tradition that has been passed down from father to son. They never discuss the importance of the wall; however, they meet every year to walk their respective sides of the wall and attempt to repair it. The poem leads the reader to believe that they repair this wall only once a year after each winter. The leakage from either side of the wall is not the entire reason for the task. The speaker goes as far as to say to the stones themselves “stay where you are until our backs are turned” (563); this would lead you to believe that there is no reason for the wall to be there. The owner uses their land for their respective priorities, and it appears that what they are doing does not affect either’s operation. One would like to take the wall down, and the other wants to keep the status quo. He has no reason for why the wall needs to stay except to say, “That a good wall makes good neighbors”(563). Bruce Myers in his review of “Mending Wall” talks about the delicate difference between the two fields: “he is all pines, and I am apple orchards”. This is a world of borders where the setting is more than a backdrop to the meaning of the action, and the point is a metaphor for separateness(Myers). Frost strikes a note of humor in his wall mending observance “my apple trees will never get across and eat the cones