Another Brick In The Wall

In Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”, the wall represents schisms of communication and cultural exchange. The title has a dual meaning: It signifies the action of mending the wall, as well as the wall that mends. We must also note that in the former interpretation, the noun ‘wall’ is vague. Is it plural or singular?; General or specific?

The “Something there is that doesn't love a wall” also has two possible approaches. The “something” can be the very narrator who begins to doubt the repairs he feels forced to complete, as we see when he inquires, "Why do they make good neighbours? / Isn't it 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. In this poem with a predominant iambic pentameter meter, the other “something there that doesn’t love a wall” can also be a force of natural attraction. Maybe the wall is not destined to exist where and when it does. Even the narrator acknowledges the silliness in their efforts to keep the wall upright, for he or she says that “We have to use a spell to make them balance: / "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"” The poem questions the validity of comfort zones, for the wall represents a comfortable, yet invasive and ephemeral area that blocks a path. Where does this path originate? What is its destination?

The narrator analyzes the blind determination of his companion, when he “[…] see[s] him there / Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top / 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”. This darkness in which he moves represents the ignorance of his faith and effort. He does not know where he is going, or why, and yet goes without question, for “He will not go behind his father's saying, / And he likes having thought of it so well / He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours"”. Here we see a practiced custom, maintained by fear and repetition, which yields to a comfortable slavery. The poem seems to criticize those who blindly follow others to remain in their comfort zone. It praises the incentive required to inspire doubt, and the initiative employed in expressing it by rejecting the norm.