Working Together in Robert Frosts Mending Wall Essay -- Mending Wall

Working Together in Robert Frost's Mending Wall The air is cool and crisp. Roosters can be heard welcoming the sun to a new day and a woman is seen, wearing a clean colorful wrap about her body and head, her shadow casting a lone silhouette on the stone wall. The woman leans over to slide a piece of paper into one of the cracks, hoping her prayer will be heard in this city of Jerusalem. Millions are inserting their prayers into the walls of Japanese temples, while an inmate in one of a hundred prisons across the United States looks past his wall toward the prayers he did not keep. Billions fall asleep each night surrounded by four walls and thousands travel to China to witness the grandest one of all. Who builds walls and who tears them down? The "Mending Wall" is the opening poem in Robert Frost's second book entitled, North of Boston. The poem portrays the casual part of life as seen by two farmers mending their wall. A great number of people might look at "Mending Wall" and see a simple poem about a simple aspect of life. If this is truly the case then why are so many drawn to the poem and what is found when more than a superficial look is spent on Robert Frost's work? The "Mending Wall" is an insightful look at social interactions as seen in the comparison of the repeated phrases and the traditional attitudes of the two farmers. The speaker believes, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall"(Stanford 1, 28). What sets this line apart from others? First there are only two phrases repeated in this piece of Robert Frost's work and we hear the speaker posing the first of them. Due to an otherwise lack of repetition, we can see that Robert Frost is trying to exemplify to the reader the different perspe... ...t took two boys to build Rome, but it takes two men to mend a wall. Works Cited Barry, Elaine. Robert Frost. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. 1973. 145 Frost, Robert. "Mending Wall." Responding to Literature. 2nd Ed. Ed. Judith A. Stanford. Mountain View, California: Mayfield Publishing Co. 1996. 1212-1213. Gerber, Philip L. Robert Frost. Ed. Kenneth Eble. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1982. 124-125 Lentricchia, Frank. Robert Frost: Modern Poetics and the Landscape of Self. Durham: Duke University Press. 1975. 103-107. Zverev, A. "A Lover's Quarrel with the World: Robert Frost." 20th Century American Literature: A Soviet View. Translated by Ronald Vroon. Progress Publishers. 1976. 241-260. Rpt. in World Literature Criticism. Vol. 2. Ed. James P. Draper. Detroit: Gale Research Inc. 1992. 1298-1299.