Everyone has limits to how much they are willing to share with others. Whether it’s a good friend or a complete stranger we have boundaries set to keep our lives from being broadcasted. Robert Frost expresses the importance of these boundaries and separation from others in his poem “Mending Wall” not only to justify division but to explain the mending of personal beliefs. As two neighbors come together to mend a wall, together a wall is fixed, a wall was questioned, and personality traits were clearly revealed. In “Mending Wall” Robert Frost uses an extended metaphor to convey that although separation can prevent relationships from growing, setting boundaries helps preserve traditions and ideologies while accepting human truths.
Within the
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Frost reaffirms the strong ideologies of the neighbor and reveals the nature of human truth through the questioning personality of the speaker. While fixing this wall, each person is on their respective side, placing rocks where they need to be. The speaker starts to wonder if the neighbor would ever imagine, like him, about how the wall is being destroyed (Mending). He fantasizes about mentioning that maybe Elves are destroying the wall and that bricks are kept together by spells, instead, the speaker realizes that the neighbor values his traditions to much too even joke about the wall in any way, and would receive a serious reply about it (Meyer). The speaker even goes on to question what the wall is “walling in or walling out” and how this affects the presence of what doesn’t love the wall (Line 33). By having the wall, it not only walls in the speaker and neighbor, but walls out interaction with the rest of the world (Mending). This creates a bubble to which other people 's knowledge and beliefs cannot enter into their minds, and the neighbor’s ideals are kept intact. Next, the speaker questions if they should take offense to the wall and the original creators of it for keeping them away from others, or if others should be offended that the wall prevents them from entering (Dworkin). His question leads to what is breaking the