Mending Wall
Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them
made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good
neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? 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.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see 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.
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
neighbors."
SAMPLE ESSAY “Mending Wall”
Note the use of background information on the topic in the introduction. Note the THESIS STATEMENT
at the end of the introduction. Each Body paragraph begins with a TOPIC SENTENCE which makes a
claim. Each body paragraph contains EVIDENCE which the writer introduces with an ORIENTATION
PHRASE and follows with QUOTE SPECIFIC ANALYSIS. Finally, the conclusion draws together all the
elements of your argument and sums up the way in which your evidence addressed the prompt.
The setting of a poem can help suggest the message the author intends to convey. “Mending Wall” by
Robert Frost seems to take place in a countryside estate. The speaker and his neighbor are fixing a wall
together which separates their properties. Throughout the poem, the reader senses that the speaker
and his neighbor have different ideas about the reason walls exist. While some people respect the ways
that walls hold things in, others worry about what walls keep out. The speaker seems to suggest that the
natural forces of the world disrupt the creation of walls rather than the building of walls.
The neighbor in the poem represents the idea of setting limits. The neighbor repeats the phrase, “good
fences make good neighbors” twice. The phrase is an old adage which suggests that keeping a clear
division between the property of two people helps each person respect the other one. The speaker
notices that nature constantly disrupts the solidity of the wall. He notices the gaps in the wall which
used to be solid before the winter. He says that “no one has seen them made…but at spring mendingtime we find them”. The way in which the wall has come apart is a mystery. It seems to happen by itself
during the winter. In this way, nature secretly takes apart what the men try to build.
The two characters in the poem, the speaker and the neighbor each represent a different attitude
toward walls. The speaker seems to question why a wall is needed. He tells his neighbor, “my apple
trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines”. Here the speaker makes a funny
observation. The possibility of apples eating pine cones is obviously impossible, but by making this
remark, the speaker tries to show how the wall doesn’t really serve a practical purpose. The neighbor,
however, believes in having walls. He stays on his side even while they are fixing the wall. While the
speaker sees the job of rebuilding the wall as a kind of “game”, the neighbor takes this job more
seriously.
The imagery in the poem helps show the speaker’s objection to the idea of walls in general. When he
first talks about his property, he mentions that something “doesn’t love a wall”. That “something”
seems to be nature. The “frozen ground-swell” knocked the stones out of place during the winter. The
stones themselves have to be admonished with a spell to even keep them in place during the mending.
The speaker jokes that he and his neighbor have to say “stay where you are” to the stones or they will
just tumble right down again. The poet seems to suggest that walls won’t stay in place unless people
consciously keep erecting them.
The two neighbors in this poem show different sides of the question. Should people keep building walls
even when it seems like nature wants walls to disappear? Robert Frost seems to suggest that people
should follow nature’s lead and let the walls fall apart. Then neighbors could share their land and ideas
more freely. If we think about this poem not just as neighbors on a country property, but as neighbors in
the larger world, Frost seems to be saying that people around the world should try to share their lives
more freely and not create so many barriers between them—the world would be a better place with
fewer walls between people.