Sunday, July 24, 2016

In the poem "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost, how does the speaker feel about the gaps in the wall?

In the poem, the speaker is unhappy about the gaps; the reason for this is that, once the gaps are discovered, he and his neighbor must work together again to put up the wall that separates their properties.


The speaker doesn't specifically care how the gaps are made, whether it is the work of hunters or of nature; he just doesn't think a wall is necessary between neighbors. He states that his neighbor grows pines, while he grows apples; meanwhile neither of them raise cattle, so there isn't any fear of cows venturing onto the other's property.


We get the idea that the speaker thinks the gaps a nuisance of sorts; he would rather leave them alone than decide which fallen boulders belong to whose side of the property. To the speaker, the wall is a waste of time, as he and his neighbor aren't enemies:



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.



The speaker disagrees with his neighbor's belief that "Good fences make good neighbors."

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