ROBERT LEE FROST: 'MENDING WALL'
ROBERT LEE FROST: ‘MENDING WALL’
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.
5 The
work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after
them and made repair
Where they have left
not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the
rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping
dogs. The gaps I mean,
10 No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring
mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know
beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet
to walk the line
And set the wall between
us once again.
15 We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders
that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves
and some are nearly balls
We have to use a
spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are
until our backs are turned!’
20 We wear our figures rough with handing them.
Oh,
just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It
comes to little more:
There where it is we
do need the wall:
He is all pines and I
am apple orchard.
25 My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones
under his pines, I tell him
He only says, ‘Good
fences make good neighbor’.
Spring is the
mischief in me, and I wonder
If
I could put a notion in his head:
30 ’Why do they make neighbor?
Isn’t
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
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 offence.
35 Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down. I
could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves
exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for
himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped
firmly by the top
40 In each hand like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness
as it seems to me,
Not of woods only,
and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind
his father’s saying,
And he likes having
thought of it so well
45 He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
POET’S BACKGROUND
Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco California
in the year 1874. Robert Lee Frost rose from a humble family background, to become
a celebrated elder statesman of poetry in America from 1914 until his death in
1963. In 1885, when Robert was only eleven years old he lost his father, and
his family had to leave California for New England where he schooled and
graduated from high school in 1891 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He later studied
as occasional student at Dartmough College, Harvard.
In 1984, Robert was married to Elinor White. The
marriage was blessed with four children but hard pressed by poverty, depression
and distress. In 1912, Robert took his family to England in search of greener
pasture. In quick succession, he
published A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914). The favorable review and
recommendation of these books by Ezra Pound prompted their reception by the
America public. From the sale of his books and teaching as well as lecturing at
various schools and colleges, Robert was able to achieve financial comfort to
cater for his family.
His poetry can be classified into nature lyrics,
dramatic narrative poems, hortatory, didactic poetry, and poems of commentary.
Robert was noted for images and metaphors drawn from simple natural phenomena;
for his blending of traditional verse forms with America local vocabulary and
speech rhythms; and for his use of a persona that is close to nature and deals
with life ‘in a spirit of compassionate realism Robert Frost died in 1963.
BACKGROUND TO THE POEM
The setting of this poem is the hilly terrain of New
England with its characteristic plantations of pine and apple trees. The usual
practice of the planters was to demarcate their plantations by setting a wall
(fence) between theirs and others. This was meant to prevent the trespassing
and maintain good neighborliness. In the poem, Frost uses the mask of the
poetic persona to argue that such fences are useful only when there are cows (lines
30 and 31) that may cause some destruction to the plantation and that such
fences should be pulled down if they are meant to fence off men because no man
can be an island ‘entire of itself’. This fact of nature is expressed in the indefinable
‘something’ that hates a wall (line 1). For emphatic reason, this line is
repeated in line 35.
Frost’s argument in categorically stated between lines
23 and 26.
There
where it is we do 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.
In the main, the poem separates on the principle of
binary opposition love / hate; make gaps / make repair; pull down / build up
separation / unity individualism / collectivism, etc.
THEME
The themes that are contained in this poem are: (a)
that fences which are meant for protective functions do not only serve for physical
separation of a man from his neighbor but also cause psychological distancing;
(b) that fencing is against nature and man, symbolically represented in
‘something’ and ‘the work of hunters’ that are responsible for making ‘the
gaps’ in the wall, (c) that the idea of fencing is against the philosophy of
the brotherhood of man and mutual co-existence; (d) that the time and efforts
used in mending the wall, should have been spent doing some more profitable
things.
Simply put, the poem is an articulate expression of
the fact that, beyond the protective function which the fence provides, it also
has psychological implications for the family fenced up.
FORM AND STRUCTURE
This
is a 45 line poem which is not segmented into stanzas. It is also a blank verse
modeled after the American speech rhythm. This simple narrative poem seeks to
comment on the New Englanders’ axiom: ‘Good
fence make good neighbors’. As it is the characteristic of Frost’s poverty,
some of the verses contain two sentences or two structures. Fragments: lines 9,
22, 30, 31, 36 and 38.
The poem also uses punctuation marks heavily and
effectively.it is perhaps, unbroken into stanza in order to show that a Wall is
normally a long unbroken structure. Quotations marks are used to mark off a
word specially used, such as ‘Elves’, and direct statements as in ‘Stay where
you are until our backs are turned’. This gives the poem the dramatic flavor it
has.
LANGUAGE AND TECHNIQUE
The language of this poem is fascinatingly
accessible. The simplicity of the language and the accessibility of the poem
are as a result of the use of appropriate diction and images that are not far-fetched.
Every lexical item used is in the line with the subject matter. Frost
introduces quote speeches as a device of making the poem natural, dramatic and
credible. Of course, it is made robust
in its use of language by employing figurative expressions among which are:
Alliteration: lines
10, 17, 20, 32, and 33
Assonance: lines 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11, etc.
Litotes: lines 1 and 35
Euphemism: lines 4, 7, 21, 36
Metaphor: lines 17 and 24
Repetition: lines 1 and 35; 27 and 45
Rhetorical
question: lines 30 and 31
Personification:
lines 25 26, 28 and 29
Synecdoche: lines 20 and 29
Smile: line 40
In the use of imagery, the images created in the poem
include those of fields of fruits, hunting, breaking and mending. All this is
in agreement with the physical terrain and customary practice of New England,
the setting of the poem. In conclusion, It is necessary to make the point that
‘spring’ is used equivocally in the poem: first, to mean the season of the year
when vegetation begins; second, to mean the time that mending of wall begins.
This is why ‘spring is the mischief’ in the persona (line 28). The use of
quotation marks is also indicative of the conversational nature of the poem.
REVISION QUESTIONS
1.
What is the attitude
of the persona to building of walls?
2.
Discuss the
language and style of this poem.
3.
According to the
poem, what are the advantages and disadvantages of walls?
4.
Frost’s ‘Mending Walls’ is a social comment on
the New England society. Comment.
5.
Identify and
discuss the figures of speech used in the poem.
By Eguriase S. M Okaka.
Comments
Post a Comment