The Mending Wall Essay Example for Free

The Mending groin EssayA stone wall separates the speakers property from his neighbors. In spring, the cardinal meet to walk the wall and jointly make repairs. The speaker sees no reason for the wall to be keptthere are no cows to be contained, just apple and pine trees. He does not believe in walls for the sake of walls. The neighbor resorts to an old saying Good fences make dandy neighbors. The speaker remains unconvinced and mischievously presses the neighbor to look beyond the old-fashioned folly of much(prenominal) reasoning. His neighbor will not be swayed. The speaker envisions his neighbor as a living souvenir from a justifiably outdated era, an example of a dark-age mentality. But the neighbor simply repeats the saying.Review The epitome at the heart of Mending Wall is striking two men meeting on foothold of civility to build a barrier between them. They do so out of tradition, out of habit. nevertheless the very earth conspires against them and makes their task Sisyphean. Sisyphus, you may recall, is the figure in Greek mythology condemned perpetually to grind a boulder up a hill, only to have the boulder roll down again. These men push boulders back on top of the wall yet just as inevitably, whether because of the hunters or sprites or at the invisible hand of nature, the boulders tumble down again. Still, the neighbors persist.The poem, thus, seems to be based on three themes barrier-building (segregation, in a sense), the doomed nature of this activity, and our persistence in this activity regardless. The speaker may dislike his neighbors pointless wall-building, may observe the activity with humorous indifference, but he himself goes to the wall at all times of the year to mend the damage done by hunters it is the speaker who contacts the neighbor at wall-mending time to set the annual appointment. Which person, then, is the real wall-builder?Looking at it from a different perspective, the building of walls, both(prenominal) literal and figurative, mark the very foundation of society. Figuratively, rules and laws are walls justice is the process of wall-mending. The ritual of wall upkeep highlights the dual and complementary nature of human society The rights of the individual are affirmed through the testimony of other individuals rights. In this way the neighbors need for wall-mending seems justified.