Mending Wall Biography Robert Frost was inspired to write Mending Wall after talking with one of his farming friend Napoleon Guay. He learned from talking with his neighbor that writing in the tones of real life is an important factor in his poetic form (Liu,Tam). Henry David Thoreau once stated that, A true account of the actual is the purest poetry. Another factor that might have played a role in inspiring Frost to write this poem was his experience of living on a farm as a small boy. Mending Wall was published in 1915 along with a collection of Frosts poems in North of Boston. Theme Statements Nature dissolves the barriers that humanity erects. The purpose of the wall in this poem was to isolate ones personality and privacy. In line one and thirty-five, Something there is that doesnt love a wall reveals that nature has no boundaries, and because it, doesnt love the wall, nature attempts destroy that boundary to bring humanity and the environment together in a harmonious bond. Nature has made, gaps even two can pass abreast, shows how nature has made a hole big enough for one person to walk across, and towards another persons property to talk. But, it also shows how humans are still unknowingly walling one another out from each others lives. Tradition undermines the desire for change. As the poem progresses it gradually changes from young ideals to old tradition. The old man in the end, is presenting what he learned from his father through tradition. In line 43, He will not go behind his fathers saying, it clearly states that he will not stray from his fathers teachings and the tradition set by his antecedents. Why change something they isnt broken? Even though the youth has his points as in lines 24-26, He is all pine and I am apple orchard. / My apple trees will never get across/ And eat the cones under his pines, the youth will never affect the old mans tradition. Apples come and go with the seasons, but pines are forever and ne...
