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Mending Wall, a la Shmoop. Those poets sure like their metaphors, don’t

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they?

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Frost’s poem, Mending Wall, centers on the repairing of a literal wall…

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…but we all know it’s not really about the wall.

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What metaphorical wall is he talking about here?

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In the poem, we are introduced to a couple of neighbors…

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…who are rebuilding the wall that exists between the two properties.

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Apparently, it was a tough winter. Maybe Santa missed a rooftop.

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Is Frost talking about the walls we put up between ourselves and our neighbors?

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Most of us are pretty picky about the people we spend our time with.

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Between our friends, our co-workers… and those members of our family who haven’t

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driven us completely crazy.

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Perhaps Frost is saying that, if we lower our guard a little bit…

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…we might forge a connection with someone we never considered…

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…someone who has been right under our nose the entire time.

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Our culture used to have a much stronger sense of community.

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In fact, in many other parts of the world, it’s not unheard of to invite someone you

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just met back to your place for a bite to eat.

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And, unlike in America, there is less than a 1 in 4 chance that either party is an axe

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murderer. But nowadays, we’re too afraid to let other

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people in…

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…and we might be missing out on some potential friendships.

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Or are we taking Frost too literally?

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Maybe this poem isn’t about neighbors specifically, but about the walls we put up to keep everyone

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out. Think about all the things you don’t say

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to the people you do care about.

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It might be for the best. We’re not sure your grandma’s ticker could take it if she

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knew how you really felt about last year’s Christmas present.

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But the fact is that most of us are fairly closed-off.

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Frost could be telling us that we need to… let our boulders down, so to speak…

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…that we could be having richer life experiences, and grow as individuals, if only we weren’t

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so stubbornly detached all of the time.

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Right, Mr. Potato Head? But… it never hurts to keep digging deeper

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when analyzing a poem.

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Could Frost be referring to walls we put up in our own heads to keep us from knowing the

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truth?

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This conversation between the two neighbors sounds an awful lot like one person undergoing

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an internal struggle…

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…almost as if he’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t quite believe.

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At one point, the narrator says to his neighbor:

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“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know… what I was walling in or walling out.”

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This line seems to indicate that the wall may not just be keeping others out…

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…it may also be keeping the wall-builder himself fenced in.

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The human skull is impenetrable enough… do we really need to be constructing more

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walls in that head of ours?

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Our brains must be getting awfully stir crazy… So… is Frost worried that we’re walling

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out our neighbors?

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Or the rest of the world?

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Or is it more a matter of us walling ourselves in?

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Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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