Mending Wall

The most widely accepted reading of “Mending Wall” sees the eponymous wall as representing the barriers people build and maintain between each other. Sometimes these barriers are literal, like Frost’s example of property boundaries between neighbors. These physical lines can be much grander in scale too, like the borders between countries. “Mending Wall” has found special relevance in these scenarios. President Ronald Reagan may have alluded to it in his famous 1987 speech encouraging Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, and the poem saw a resurgence in popularity in response to the Trump Administration’s proposed border wall between the United States and Mexico. Historically, it has been used to bolster arguments on both sides of debates about nationalism, international borders, and immigration.

However, the barriers between people can be mental, too. The speaker sees himself as more playful, more educated, more flexible, and more civilized than his neighbor. He sees pointless barriers between people as time wasters at best, harmful at worst. While Frost may seem at first to sympathize with the speaker, he is careful not to weigh the scales too heavily in his favor. There is something to be said for the neighbor’s more conservative approach, for his dedication to hard work and reliability and his respect for tradition.