The Mending Wall

Read Robert Frost’s famous poem “The Mending Wall” and answer the following pre-writing questions to gather information and support for your essay.

Frost writes the poem as a blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) monologue. He establishes the speaker as one who questions why he and his neighbor (from over the hill) continue to rebuild the stone wall establishing the boundary between their lands when the effort seems futile.

1.      The speaker of the poem acknowledges several reasons for not having a wall. List the reasons he offers.

2.      The speaker is imaginative and tries to turn the task of repairing the stone wall into a game. How does his neighbor respond?

3.      Why does the speaker compare his neighbor to a “stone savage armed’?

4.      Why does the speaker seem willing to continue the custom of repairing the wall in spite of his recognition that walls are impermanent?

5.      What does the poem suggest about human control of nature? How do the speaker and his neighbor represent two attitudes toward nature?

6.      Where do you find humor in the poem?

7.      Do you think the speaker finds his neighbor frustrating or funny or difficult to understand?

After answering the above questions about Robert Frost’s poem “The Mending Wall”, re-read the poem and use the information gathered in responding to the questions as your content for a short essay.

Choose one of the following three options as the topic for a 500-750 word essay in which you establish paragraph topics and develop your topics through explanations and offering supporting evidence through: quotation, paraphrases, and/or brief summaries. Do not conduct any outside reading for this assignment.

A.    Explain and give evidence to support your claim that the speaker agrees that “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors.”

B.     Write an essay to show that by recognizing the limits of human control of nature, or other people, or time the speaker can keep his perspective and avoid hardening into a “Stone age savage” continuing a tradition without reflecting on it.

C.     Write an essay to show that traditions can both promote and restrict “neighborliness.”