Sample Literary Criticism Essay
Mending Wall – Robert Frost
By means of the rural scene evoked in this poem we manage to glean an important argument about some very striking issues which amplify the simple act of mending a rubble wall. Frost uses imagery, symbolism and allegory in order to convey his own thoughts about a society and age that on first impressions appears to be too distant from the georgic setting of this poem.
The first four lines of the poem present us with a forceful picture of a destructive power that hinders man’s attempts at the imposition of order. This power is nature in all its savage strength, obliterating the walls that people build between themselves. In portraying nature as a destructive power, Frost aims to depict the unruly force that guides the universe. For Frost nature is a passionate and erratic mother, heedless of reason, and who is vengeful only in the face of man’s futile attempts at imposing order. A wall is a human construct, a social one at that. It is there to categorise, divide and maintain order through hierarchical and other such divisions. A wall separates people, allotting to them their own individual space, confining them into cells and deluding them with the belief that through this constrictive independence unity can be achieved. However nature undermines this strong sense of individuality, of each person’s detachment from others. A wall is a muzzle restraining the effusions that would otherwise flow out of human beings. But nature destroys the constructs that go against it, constructs that strive to impose order on its seemingly chaotic being. Like a wild animal encaged in the world of human entertainment, nature sometimes revolts against the demands made upon it by man.
The first four lines depict nature as unnecessarily destructive. But beneath the surface of Frost’s imagery we detect a stronger, more positive power than that of mere eradication. Nature is the life-force, the mother of love wanting only the best for its offspring. Unity of all men, consanguinity and true brotherhood are the values emphasised in this poem. The antithesis to this force of love is the social and artificial world man creates for himself. The latter is foremostly represented by the rubble wall, but other images that further highlight the stagnation found in the counterfeitness of the social world abound in the poem. The images of the hunters, the pine wood, the 'old-stone savage', and others all serve to highlight the other facet of destructiveness. But whereas nature’s destructiveness is willed by love and by the cyclic order of the universe, human destructiveness is propagated by the ambitious need to control the world and its living soul.
People are depicted as being totally immersed in the stifling illusion that 'Good fences make good neighbours'. In other terms, human beings wholly believe in their own abilities at ensuring the good for all. Frost shows us how mistaken we are in imbibing in such blind pretensions and aspirations. The end result is that we all live in 'darkness', not quite knowing that our actions are leading us to destroy our world and our own selves. One of the main contrasts we find in the poem is that between the persona and his neighbour. The persona gives us a general picture of nature’s vitality and of the ignorance that reigns when people believe in their own illusions. The line 'I let my neighbour know beyond the hill' presents us with a bleak portrait of the detachment that exists in this world where neighbours supposedly meet each other only to mend rubble walls every spring. This is further emphasised by the act of re-building the rubble wall. The two farmers keep the wall between them as if afraid of contaminating each other. However, the forlornness they try to support through their act of creation is undermined by the life-force that jolts the wall and starts pulling it down once again. The impression we get is that the wall is a fragile construction that will not withstand the onslaught of nature’s thirst for union. Another contrast comes out in that whereas nature destroys in order to propagate love and life, human beings create in order to repress love and life.
The line 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' further highlights the fact that people, though aware of the elfish force working close beside them, still persist in pursuing their illusions of social order. Every spring they are made aware that something mysterious is displeased with 'the wall between us'. But still people strive to maintain that stoical indifference to that 'Something there is that doesn’t love a wall'. For the placid neighbour who will not be persuaded to the contrary a wall is necessary, for he is convinced that solely its continually sustained existence can yield him and his fellow men with harmony, joy and love. He believes this not out of the experience that has educated him in life, but because a wall is something required by tradition. It is this which propels him and all those holding his opinion into the 'darkness' the persona speaks of in line forty-one. This neighbour is quite adamant about what he believes to be the right way to act and he 'will not go behind his father’s saying'. He will not experiment with life and seek the truth that suits him best; he is quite content to inherit the truths held by his ancestors, his culture and his society. We may assume that this man will play it safe all throughout his life. Frost subtly indicts this sluggishness. The poet himself shows us that new and special things can flow out of that which is considered simple. The poem itself can easily give one the wrong impression of being a simplistic argument about the values of friendship and communication. However, beyond these two issues of great consequence reside other far more important thematic concerns. The latter, if sought for, will trail us into an exploration of the way we construct our lives and how as individuals we are determined by social and cultural forces. Hence we see that Frost’s poem is not a refutation of the value of individuality. What Frost proposes is the blending of individuality and confraternity in such a way that people can feel true unity amongst themselves while still preserving their unique individuality. The speaker of the poem is an individual who does not propagate his own self through detachment and isolation. His own individuality and self reliance are used to value life and fellow human beings and not to entangle himself in a net that deludes him with the feeling of social communion but is in fact a slow quenching of true human relations.
Frost’s poem is an affirmation of the fact that human beings need each other in order to survive the travails of daily existence. However, the constructs man currently uses in order to strengthen the link with others are only helping him to ebb away from the central pulse of humanity. For Frost the nexus is reinforced solely through the recognition that the veil of artificiality is a hazard, but that the natural bond that exists amongst us is the only way of saving our world and ourselves. All this is emphasised by the symbolism used in the poem. As mentioned already, the neighbour of the persona is a man who believes in the false pyramids erected by human beings. His world is one of gloomy pine trees with cones that dry and fester in the shade. His is a world of tradition, a world that is headstrong and menacing to those who question its order. This world of tradition has been reproduced without the slightest alteration since the very first day when human beings started to build their first walls. It is a world in which innovation and change are shunned. Darkness is handed down like some genetically inherited disease. It is a staid bleak world characterised by the cliché image of autumn pine trees. Its antithesis is the mischievous spring that stands as a life-force within the persona. The persona is the one who desires union and confraternity, who desires a bond that goes beyond convention and formal attitudes towards life. The persona is the man compelled to live in the social world he was born into, but who is defiant all the same. He is symbolised by spring and by elves, as well as by the 'apple trees' which help to further highlight his vitality and sprightliness as well as his bond to the throbbing life that 'spills the upper boulders in the sun'. The speaker is not an inert sort of person. His life is only slightly tinged with the submissive acceptance of all that is handed down to him, but which so strongly characterises his neighbour. The persona is an inquisitive man who yearns to know more about life, the world and his own self:
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 offense…
This need for knowledge is characteristic of the man who is out to experience life, to live it to the full and to come to know its ups and downs. The persona does not aim for sober plain-sailing. Nature’s strenuous vigour fascinates him and in the afore-quoted three lines the persona questions man's authority and overbearing attitude. The persona alludes to the fact that social constructs inhibit human communication and alienate the individual from his fellow brothers. However, through the persona’s awareness of the world he is living in we get a glimpse of how strong this human darkness really is. The persona aims to live his life in accordance with the way pointed out to him by nature itself. But he cannot convince his neighbour to do the same and this attests to the fact that it is very difficult to change the ways of society. The persona himself is ultimately an individual forming part of the artificiality that encircles each and every individual born into the social world. It is a world we cannot evade from although the escapism it breeds is potent enough to hinder us from achieving true communion with others. Frost’s indictment is countered by the fact of man’s dependence on the system that made or else, in Post-Struturalist terms, wrote him into being.
‘Mending Wall’ is a very appropriate poem for the present day and age. The poem’s resolution can be seen as one in which hope for a better future does not manage to outshine the synthetic salvation promised by the human artificial sphere of existence. After all not even nature itself can stop the headstrong farmer from continuing to mend his wall each successive year. However, despite its tone of negative foreboding, the poem’s message of hope resides in the endeavour manifested by nature’s and the speaker's struggle to safeguard a truth which is at risk in an age which 'moves in darkness'.
By means of the rural scene evoked in this poem we manage to glean an important argument about some very striking issues which amplify the simple act of mending a rubble wall. Frost uses imagery, symbolism and allegory in order to convey his own thoughts about a society and age that on first impressions appears to be too distant from the georgic setting of this poem.
The first four lines of the poem present us with a forceful picture of a destructive power that hinders man’s attempts at the imposition of order. This power is nature in all its savage strength, obliterating the walls that people build between themselves. In portraying nature as a destructive power, Frost aims to depict the unruly force that guides the universe. For Frost nature is a passionate and erratic mother, heedless of reason, and who is vengeful only in the face of man’s futile attempts at imposing order. A wall is a human construct, a social one at that. It is there to categorise, divide and maintain order through hierarchical and other such divisions. A wall separates people, allotting to them their own individual space, confining them into cells and deluding them with the belief that through this constrictive independence unity can be achieved. However nature undermines this strong sense of individuality, of each person’s detachment from others. A wall is a muzzle restraining the effusions that would otherwise flow out of human beings. But nature destroys the constructs that go against it, constructs that strive to impose order on its seemingly chaotic being. Like a wild animal encaged in the world of human entertainment, nature sometimes revolts against the demands made upon it by man.
The first four lines depict nature as unnecessarily destructive. But beneath the surface of Frost’s imagery we detect a stronger, more positive power than that of mere eradication. Nature is the life-force, the mother of love wanting only the best for its offspring. Unity of all men, consanguinity and true brotherhood are the values emphasised in this poem. The antithesis to this force of love is the social and artificial world man creates for himself. The latter is foremostly represented by the rubble wall, but other images that further highlight the stagnation found in the counterfeitness of the social world abound in the poem. The images of the hunters, the pine wood, the 'old-stone savage', and others all serve to highlight the other facet of destructiveness. But whereas nature’s destructiveness is willed by love and by the cyclic order of the universe, human destructiveness is propagated by the ambitious need to control the world and its living soul.
People are depicted as being totally immersed in the stifling illusion that 'Good fences make good neighbours'. In other terms, human beings wholly believe in their own abilities at ensuring the good for all. Frost shows us how mistaken we are in imbibing in such blind pretensions and aspirations. The end result is that we all live in 'darkness', not quite knowing that our actions are leading us to destroy our world and our own selves. One of the main contrasts we find in the poem is that between the persona and his neighbour. The persona gives us a general picture of nature’s vitality and of the ignorance that reigns when people believe in their own illusions. The line 'I let my neighbour know beyond the hill' presents us with a bleak portrait of the detachment that exists in this world where neighbours supposedly meet each other only to mend rubble walls every spring. This is further emphasised by the act of re-building the rubble wall. The two farmers keep the wall between them as if afraid of contaminating each other. However, the forlornness they try to support through their act of creation is undermined by the life-force that jolts the wall and starts pulling it down once again. The impression we get is that the wall is a fragile construction that will not withstand the onslaught of nature’s thirst for union. Another contrast comes out in that whereas nature destroys in order to propagate love and life, human beings create in order to repress love and life.
The line 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' further highlights the fact that people, though aware of the elfish force working close beside them, still persist in pursuing their illusions of social order. Every spring they are made aware that something mysterious is displeased with 'the wall between us'. But still people strive to maintain that stoical indifference to that 'Something there is that doesn’t love a wall'. For the placid neighbour who will not be persuaded to the contrary a wall is necessary, for he is convinced that solely its continually sustained existence can yield him and his fellow men with harmony, joy and love. He believes this not out of the experience that has educated him in life, but because a wall is something required by tradition. It is this which propels him and all those holding his opinion into the 'darkness' the persona speaks of in line forty-one. This neighbour is quite adamant about what he believes to be the right way to act and he 'will not go behind his father’s saying'. He will not experiment with life and seek the truth that suits him best; he is quite content to inherit the truths held by his ancestors, his culture and his society. We may assume that this man will play it safe all throughout his life. Frost subtly indicts this sluggishness. The poet himself shows us that new and special things can flow out of that which is considered simple. The poem itself can easily give one the wrong impression of being a simplistic argument about the values of friendship and communication. However, beyond these two issues of great consequence reside other far more important thematic concerns. The latter, if sought for, will trail us into an exploration of the way we construct our lives and how as individuals we are determined by social and cultural forces. Hence we see that Frost’s poem is not a refutation of the value of individuality. What Frost proposes is the blending of individuality and confraternity in such a way that people can feel true unity amongst themselves while still preserving their unique individuality. The speaker of the poem is an individual who does not propagate his own self through detachment and isolation. His own individuality and self reliance are used to value life and fellow human beings and not to entangle himself in a net that deludes him with the feeling of social communion but is in fact a slow quenching of true human relations.
Frost’s poem is an affirmation of the fact that human beings need each other in order to survive the travails of daily existence. However, the constructs man currently uses in order to strengthen the link with others are only helping him to ebb away from the central pulse of humanity. For Frost the nexus is reinforced solely through the recognition that the veil of artificiality is a hazard, but that the natural bond that exists amongst us is the only way of saving our world and ourselves. All this is emphasised by the symbolism used in the poem. As mentioned already, the neighbour of the persona is a man who believes in the false pyramids erected by human beings. His world is one of gloomy pine trees with cones that dry and fester in the shade. His is a world of tradition, a world that is headstrong and menacing to those who question its order. This world of tradition has been reproduced without the slightest alteration since the very first day when human beings started to build their first walls. It is a world in which innovation and change are shunned. Darkness is handed down like some genetically inherited disease. It is a staid bleak world characterised by the cliché image of autumn pine trees. Its antithesis is the mischievous spring that stands as a life-force within the persona. The persona is the one who desires union and confraternity, who desires a bond that goes beyond convention and formal attitudes towards life. The persona is the man compelled to live in the social world he was born into, but who is defiant all the same. He is symbolised by spring and by elves, as well as by the 'apple trees' which help to further highlight his vitality and sprightliness as well as his bond to the throbbing life that 'spills the upper boulders in the sun'. The speaker is not an inert sort of person. His life is only slightly tinged with the submissive acceptance of all that is handed down to him, but which so strongly characterises his neighbour. The persona is an inquisitive man who yearns to know more about life, the world and his own self:
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 offense…
This need for knowledge is characteristic of the man who is out to experience life, to live it to the full and to come to know its ups and downs. The persona does not aim for sober plain-sailing. Nature’s strenuous vigour fascinates him and in the afore-quoted three lines the persona questions man's authority and overbearing attitude. The persona alludes to the fact that social constructs inhibit human communication and alienate the individual from his fellow brothers. However, through the persona’s awareness of the world he is living in we get a glimpse of how strong this human darkness really is. The persona aims to live his life in accordance with the way pointed out to him by nature itself. But he cannot convince his neighbour to do the same and this attests to the fact that it is very difficult to change the ways of society. The persona himself is ultimately an individual forming part of the artificiality that encircles each and every individual born into the social world. It is a world we cannot evade from although the escapism it breeds is potent enough to hinder us from achieving true communion with others. Frost’s indictment is countered by the fact of man’s dependence on the system that made or else, in Post-Struturalist terms, wrote him into being.
‘Mending Wall’ is a very appropriate poem for the present day and age. The poem’s resolution can be seen as one in which hope for a better future does not manage to outshine the synthetic salvation promised by the human artificial sphere of existence. After all not even nature itself can stop the headstrong farmer from continuing to mend his wall each successive year. However, despite its tone of negative foreboding, the poem’s message of hope resides in the endeavour manifested by nature’s and the speaker's struggle to safeguard a truth which is at risk in an age which 'moves in darkness'.
