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Mending Wall

 

            In the poem "Mending Wall- by Robert Frost two neighbors are making their annual walk down their property line, mending up the parts of the stone that have fallen to the harsh elements of the winter. The speaker of the poem challenges the need for the wall. He asks his neighbor as they walk, why they even need to mend it up at all. He raises the pint that walls were only put in place to keep cattle in, and neither of them have any more animals. .
             The first line of the poem "something there doesn't love a wall- (1) states that nature does not love the wall. This is a strong statement that nature does not promote the way in which society separates itself from one another. Nature does not see differences based upon race, customs, or any social reason for segregation's reappear after it seems that progress has been made to tear down theses barriers.
             The repetition of between (24-25) should give us a pause and remind us of its two equally common meanings: between as separation, as in "something's come between us,"" and between as what might be shared and held in common, as in " a secret between people- or " a bond between friends."" The wall divides but it also connects, if you look at it that way.
             Frost's metaphor of the stones in the wall being "loaves- or "balls- (26-27) alludes to how people can put anything, even simple inanimate objects such as these or a wall, between one another. The separation therefore embodied by the wall occurs everywhere and at all times, and pervades every aspect of our lives and interactions .
             In line 22 the narrator begins to question the need of this wall. He realizes that he has an apple orchard and his neighbor a pine but he feels that this will cause no harm to each other. This is Frost's way of stating that two people with different ways of belief, race, or culture, can exist side by side and in harmony without barriers to separate them from one another.


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