Actual and Symbolic Barriers in Robert Frosts Mending Wall Essay

Actual and Symbolic Barriers in Robert Frosts Mending Wall The appearance of barriers, both literal and figurative, is significant to the narrative of Robert Frosts Mending Wall. The story in this piece revolves around a wall separating two men, their yards, and their lives. The wall is not only a physical boundary it also symbolizes the barriers between the two in other aspects of their lives.The most noticeable barrier in this work is obviously the wall dividing the yard. The reason for a wall between the trees is unknown to the narrator and the reader. The speaker unit questions the look at for the close in when he says, Before I built a wall Id ask to know/ What I was walling in or walling out, / And to whom I was the likes of to give offense. These feelings are expressed also in lines 23 through 26. The wall is located between the neighbors pine grove and the speakers apple orchard. Is there a point in dividing these trees? Even though the narrator does not know the pur pose of the wall, he is always the one responsible for making sure it is desexualiseed every(prenominal) year. More than likely he unconsciously feels a need for the fence too. Perhaps it is a need for his privacy or maybe it is a need to have a connection with the outside world. In the lines Where they have not left one stone on a stone, / But they would have the hunt down out of hiding, the wall represents the barriers people put up so that their vulnerabilities and secrets can remain hidden. Once this wall is broken there is a need to mend it in order to keep others from seeing what is on the opposite side of the wall. There are other instances of the wall representing the need for separation between in the flesh(predicate) and private aspects of lives. In lines 16 though 20, ... ...need to keep the wall up in order to protect themselves from outsiders. At the same time though, the need for the religious rite of mending the fence is beyond their control. The narrator st ates, Something there is that doesnt love a wall...And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. (Lines 1-4) The choice to pass through the fence is available, and so is the choice to mend the wall each year. Both know that the fence will fall again and the next spring they will be reunited. As long as the literal wall exists there will be contact between the two men. However as long as the figurative barriers remain, the distance between them is further than any fence could separate them. Work CitedRobert Frost. Mending Wall. Making Literature Matter An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. brand-new York Bedford/St. Martins, 2000. p106-107.