ABSTRACT
In his poem “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost places two seemingly different men on opposite sides of a stone wall that is in a state of deterioration. Then he sets them about the task of making repairs. One of the men, the speaker of the poem, is ambivalent about whether he truly wishes to repair the wall year after year (although he initiates the activity in this instance) or whether he simply uses mending as a way of sharing time and verbal exchange with his neighbor while sharing a philosophical discussion with those of us who listen in on the poem. He would appear to be motivated by a strong desire to destroy the barriers that inhibit the total enjoining of minds and space. At first, the neighbor appears to serve only as a foil to the insight of the speaker; he is motivated by simpler thought regarding the purpose of mending the wall, stubbornly insisting on maintaining a barrier of stone and minimalist human interaction as the only effective means of getting along in the world.
