by side. We all live in a world where we can live next to someone and yet do not know him or her at all because we have a “wall between us.” This wall stops us from finding common ground with our neighbors (near and far) in order to end social boundaries within our society. All the hard work that they put into building this wall each year is wasted it will only falls again. Frost wroteWe have to use a spell to make them balance:Stay where you are until are backs our turned!We wear our fingers rough with handling them. (18-20) This passage is a great example of how the two men worked hard to rebuild the wall between them each spring knowing that in time, it would only fall down again. Social boundaries are like this wall because it is built up as a way of protection from things, people, and cultures that we do not understand. The wall can only be built up so high before it will fall by pressure from society. I also think that it is ironic that the 1st person in the poem is always asking his neighbor, why they do this each year but he never refuses to do it. This is a good example of how social boundaries are able to endure because even though people will speak out about it, very few people will do something to change it. The fence also represents how social prejudices are started, which is at a young age in the home. The neighbor’s whole purpose for having this wall was that “He will not go behind his father saying… Good fences make good neighbors.” In order to breakdown social boundaries, we must first start at home with our families and ourselves and then go outside our home to meet our neighbors for the first time. In this paper I have tried to answer the four questions, which help to give insight on Robert Frost and his poem Mending Wall. These questions help us to better understand the man and his poetry and the impacted that he and his work had on the twentieth century., ...
