By Robert Frost (1874-1963) A Study Guide | ||||||||||
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Study Guide Prepared by Michael J. Cummings..© 2008 Type of Work and Years of Publication ......."Mending Wall" is a lyric poem of forty-five lines centering on whether it is wise to erect walls or other barriers. It first appeared in North of Boston, a collection of Frost's poems published in London in May 1914 by David Nutt. The Henry Holt company published North of Boston in New York in 1915. .......Robert Frost wrote "Mending Wall" in blank verse, a form of poetry with unrhymed lines in iambic pentamenter, a metric scheme with five pairs of syllables per line, each pair containing an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The first four lines of the poem demonstrate the pattern. ........1...................2..................3.................4................5
.......The
central theme of "Mending Wall" is whether it is wise to erect walls and
other types of barriers.
..............I see him there.......At second glance, the poem seems to indicate that walls may be necessary after all—at least in some cases—as lines 33-35 suggest: Before I built a wall I'd ask to knowThis sentence indicates that the speaker would approve of a wall with an obvious purpose. Prisons, bank vaults, zoos, museums, and nuclear power plants, for example, all require walls. And if you live near a prison or a nuclear plant, you would probably agree that good walls indeed make good neighbors. .......Ironically, in the interest of comity, the speaker of the poem each spring helps to reconstruct a wall he believes is unnecessary. He doesn’t want a wall of disagreement to stand between him and his neighbor. In other words, he sees the unnecessary wall as necessary.
.. Mending Wall Something there
is that doesn't love a wall,
. Style .......Frost
wrote poetry in the simple language of everyday conversation. Even a child
could define most, if not all, of the words in "Mending Wall." However,
when the reader peeks beneath the words, phrases, and sentences, he finds
ambiguity and unanswered questions. Why, for example, does the speaker
continue to help his neighbor rebuild the wall if he believes that it serves
no purpose? As the speaker points out, "My apples trees will never get
across / And eat the cones under his pines . . . " (lines 25-26). And whom
do the hunters represent? Are they symbols of pillaging marauders, perhaps,
or empire-building armies that cross borders to kill their quarry? (The
year that Frost wrote the poem, 1914, may be significant in this regard,
for it was in August of that year that the First World War began.) Thus,
Frost is simple and complex, obvious and obscure. Of course, life is that
way. A person smiles at us, and we wonder whether he is frowning inside.
A neighbor builds a fence, and we wonder whether he wants to keep his children
in or our children out.
Literary Devices and Imagery .......Frost is spare in his use of adornment and literary devices, making the poem sound like a conversation over a cup of coffee. However, the poem does contain many poetry conventions, including the metric pattern of Shakespeare—blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter)—used throughout the poem. It also contains another common Shakespearean device, inversion (or anastrophe), in what is perhaps the most memorable line in the poem: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." (Ordinarily, one would write or say, "There is something that doesn't love a wall.) In lines 17-19, Frost uses metaphor, personification, and hyperbole. And some are loaves and some so nearly ballsA metaphor compares the stone blocks to loaves and balls. A metaphor-hyperbole compares the method of placing the rocks to a spell. A personification (quoted sentence) treats the blocks as persons. .......In lines 32 and 33, Frost uses alliteration: Before I built a wall I'd ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out. .......Robert
Frost (1874-1963) was born in San Francisco, California, where he spent
his childhood. In 1885, after his father died of tuberculosis, the Frosts
moved to Massachusetts. There, Robert graduated from high school, sharing
top honors with a student he would later marry, Elinor White.
Study Questions and Writing Topics 1...Explain
the purpose of the following famous walls or barriers: the Iron Curtain,
the Bamboo Curtain, Hadrian's Wall, the Great Wall of China, the Maginot
Line, and the 38th Parallel.
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