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Thanks for the thread, and the analysis. At first I wasn't seeing any of the Biblical connections so I'm glad you pointed them out. I like it best when poetry motivates the reader to do something practical - for instance, when it causes us to view the current world in a new way, or when it causes us to make a change in our lives. Considering the poem in the year 2018, I was quickly reminded of a recent study of 20,000 people that revealed that young people (ages 18 to 24) are far more likely to report being lonely than the elderly (ages 72 and older). You could interpret the results of this study as either "young people tend to be lonely" or as "this particular generation of young people is especially isolated," but in either case, I think the reasons young people are having a hard time coming together are the same reasons that the narrator and his neighbor feel compelled to mend the wall - that is, fear of lifestyle incompatibility, fear of danger, etc. I guess some amount of ability to protect yourself is good (I am certainly glad I can lock my apartment door at night), but isolation can be dangerous too (as the article I linked points out, loneliness carries the same health risks as smoking 15 cigarettes per day). Sticking yourself in your room all day is unhealthy for other reasons as well - a different study found that indoor air contains 2 to 5 times as many pollutants as outdoor air. I mean, obviously there is nothing in the poem about loneliness or being a shut-in, and I understand I am inventing stuff that isn't there, but that's kind of how I like to read poems. Another thing that poem reminded me of is the following quote attributed to Mother Teresa: "I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?" What a "New Testament"-style viewpoint. I could talk about how I might apply this poem to my own life but I don't think anyone is interested so I'll just keep it to myself. Oh yeah, one other thing: when I first read the title, I interpreted the word "mending" as an adjective that describes "wall." I thought the title meant sometjing like "wall that mends." After reading the poem it's clear that the title is instead using "mending" as a verb with "wall" as the object, meaning "mending the wall," but I just wonder if there could be any validity to the way I read it initially? Frost could have easily cleared things up by calling the poem "mending the wall," and I'm puzzling over why he didn't. The most likely option seems to be, as Manifisto & FilthIncarnate suggested, that Frost likes to purposely obfuscate his poems and make them tough to read. |
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May 17, 2018 13:47
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I agree, and I too observed the "nature vs. civilization" conflict in the poem. |
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May 17, 2018 15:04
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