Mending Wall: A Wall Built On Metaphor Essay

Mending Wall: A Wall Built of Metaphor
Although there are many poetic devices skillfully used in the poem, imagery, symbolism, personification, repetition, refrain, simile, and metaphor, Mending Wall is a poem that is really built on metaphor.
Frosts use of metaphors, often seasoned with a pinch of humor, is what makes him special. Metaphor is his most often used and most important tool. In his poem Mending Wall there is plenty of metaphor. This poem, like most of his poems, revolves around a common object or event. But these objects and events are not only what they appear to be, they also have a deeper meaning, they are metaphors for larger issues and themes. By obscuring his theme and working so covertly in metaphor, the reader is forced to come to their own conclusions about the work. This is exactly what Frost is trying to accomplish, through metaphor he strives to make the reader think about his poem, what it means and what he is trying to say.
Robert Frost the most famous American poet of the last century was born in San Francisco in 1874. He is known for his deceptively simple style that artfully and effortlessly weaves together traditional metrical forms with colloquial American speech.   He often used ordinary objects or events from his New England background as subjects for his work (Madden 269). In Frost’s poem Mending Wall, two farmers meet in spring to mend the wall that separates their property. As they walk the wall together “one on a side” repairing damage, the narrator muses about why they need a wall at all. While the other farmer only repeats the mantra he learned from his father “good fences make good neighbors”. Upon closer examination we find that this story is probably about more than a simple wall. What this poem means exactly and what conclusions can be drawn, is open to interpretation. Like the narrator in this poem, Frost sometimes had a wry and mischievous sense of humor.
The title itself, Mending Wall, has meaning in the way it...