Robert Frost, Mending Wall

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Courtesy of Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College.

Robert Frost

Mending Wall (Literature To Go, p. 574)

Listen to “Mending Wall,” read by Robert Frost.

From Robert Frost Reads His Poetry (AUDIO) by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1956, 1988 by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing

  1. first response. What might the “Something” be that “doesn’t love a wall” (line 1)? Why does the speaker remind his neighbor each spring that the wall needs to be repaired? It is ironic that the speaker initiates the mending? Is there anything good about the wall?

  2. How do the speaker and his neighbor differ in sensibilities? What is suggested about the neighbor in lines 41 and 42?

  3. The neighbor likes the saying “Good fences make good neighbors” so well that he repeats it (lines 27, 45). Does the speaker also say something twice? What else suggests that the speaker’s attitude toward the wall is not necessarily Frost’s?

  4. Although the speaker’s language is colloquial, what is poetic about the sounds and rhythms he uses?

  5. This poem was first published in 1914; Frost read it to an audience when he visited Russia in 1962. What do these facts suggest about the symbolic value of “Mending Wall”?