y, and I'd rather/He said it for himself." The speaker longs forthe neighbor to think about, question, even challenge the tradition that the wall represents. It isimportant to note that the speaker does not say, "Elves," she only wishes to do so. Unless theneighbor questions the thing for himself, nothing has changed. If she instills any idea in him, there is the risk that this too will mutate, generations hence, into just another tradition. It is theact of individual thought that the speaker wishes for her neighbor. She wants him to question thewall as a result of his own free-thinking, not due to anyone else's influence, including her own. The speaker likens the neighbor to a cave-man with the lines, "I see him there/Bringing a stonegrasped firmly by the top/In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed/He moves in darkness asit seems to me...". The speaker sees the neighbor as a symbol of the past, a cave-man stuck inthe Dark Ages. He acts without thought. The tradition is instinctive for him, something not to bequestioned, but rather done without question. It is not his place or his right to question - "Hewill not go behind his father's saying/And he likes having thought of it so well/He says again,'Good fences make good neighbors.' " The neighbor is doing nothing more than what his fatherinstilled in him, and more than likely it was instilled in his father by his grandfather, and so on. In a time when the country is re-examining and mending many of its "walls" RobertFrost's call to question the walls we build is sound and timely advice. Frost shows us that wecan become as restricted by unquestioned tradition as we can by the walls we build and blindlyrebuild - he seems to speak to us through the lines of "The Mending Wall" saying, "goodneighbors don't need fences. ...
