Mending Wall Robert Frost

Throughout the history of man, separation has been a part to their lives in one fashion or another.

Man has faced separation from their god, from their community, from their loved ones and from their dreams and desires. Recognizing this continuing condition, writers throughout time have written about such separation that people have experienced. In fact, separation seems to be the central theme in many literary pieces of work. Robert Frost gave us the poem, “Mending Wall” which explores separation of one neighbor from another.

Additionally, Frost wrote, “Home Burial” which demonstrates the separation experienced by a couple after the loss of their child. John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer” shares the journey of Neddy whose alcoholism has separated himself from time, his family, friends, money and health. Walter Lee Younger in Lorraine Hansberry’s, “A Raisin in the Sun” faces constant separation from his dreams and a separation of ideals from his family. W. E. B.

 Dubois shares with the reader a separation of an entire people from their equality thought to have been given to them forty years prior. Though separation may not be the primary message of the writers above, it certainly reveals itself in a variety of ways.The myriad of ways separation is used in the poems and stories previously mentioned are as vast as the causes of the gaps themselves. The speaker in Frost’s, “Mending Wall” expresses through thoughts primarily the necessity for a wall between himself and his neighbor.Every year the wall is damaged by weather and hunters as the speaker indicates, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall (Frost, 51).

” Additionally, the speaker asks his neighbor of what purpose is there is such a wall as what is grown on his land is completely different from what grows on his neighbors land, “There where it is we do not need the wall / He is all pine and I am apple orchard / My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him (Frost, 51). ” The wall obviously predates the speaker and the neighbor’s adulthood.The speaker ponders what he would consider before he built a wall. He says to himself, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out (Frost, 51).

” It is apparent from the passages that the free thinking speaker understands that the necessity of a wall has come and gone. Reflective of the apple orchards he grows, the speaker is of a nicer persona than his neighbor and his pines. The pines of the neighbor reflect his prickly personality and his desire to remain separated by the wall.In order to keep the physical wall from becoming a larger invisible one, the grower of the apple orchards keeps most of his thoughts to himself, recognizing his neighbor’s reasoning for the wall are his father’s words, “He will not go beyond his father’s saying, / And he like having thought of it so well / He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors (Frost, 52). ” Understanding that the wall is only a symbol of the separation between him and his neighbor, the speaker wishes he could find a way for the neighbor to see for himself the lack of need for the wall.Unable to get his neighbor to speak of tearing down the wall, the speaker settles into the idea that their annual mending of the wall will be as much as great as their relationship can be.

The wall and the neighbor’s unquestioned loyalty to his father’s words represent the individualism and isolationism so pervasive in this nation. Each year the two neighbors gather together to mend a wall that may contribute to maintaining their distant, separation relationship as neighbors.Separation can also manage its way into the lives of loved ones. Just like the neighbors in “Mending Wall” (Frost, 51), couples can be thrust into situations that cause them to be emotionally separated by events beyond their control. The neighbors were forced to deal a wall built by their predecessors.

The couple in Frost’s, “Home Burial” (Frost, 53) though living under the same roof had become emotionally separated in the different manners in which they bought dealt with the child’s death.Though not a physical wall, their child’s death acting in the same manner to keep them separated as said by the husband, “Though I don’t like such things ‘twixt those that love. / Two that don’t love can’t live together without them. / But two that do can’t live together with them (Frost, 55). ” The husband recognizes that lack of communication about their child’s death is driving a greater wedge between them. With little or no communication, the husband believes his wife is over the top with her grief, “I do think, though, you overdo it a little (Frost, 55).

”The separation brought about by the mental anguish, allows the wife to actually believe that her husband has a very flippant attitude regarding the death of their child. Searching for answers to his own questions regarding the burial of his son, the husband is thought to be a monster when he is overheard saying, “Three foggy morning and one rainy day / Will rot the best birch fence a man can build (Frost, 56). ” The wife believes that her husband is not thinking of the child that he just buried.Her anger toward him builds to resentment without any communication to eliminate the growing separation. The two ways in which the couple deal with grief and their lack of understanding of each other’s method of coping drives the emotional separation that will be difficult if at all possible to rid themselves of. Physical walls between two individuals can be brought down in an instant.

Emotional separation between two people can be closed and healed with communication.The separation that keeps people from their equality or their dreams is far more difficult to resolve and eliminate. This type of separation can be felt as a force that prevents an individual or people from progressing. Separation of this type can be the base for which a powder keg of stress and tension explodes. In W.

E. B Du Bois’ book, “The Souls of Black Folk” and Lorraine Hansberry’s play, “A Raisin in the Sun” demonstrate the inequality faced by African-Americans and the resulting desperation to achieve, overcome or just erupt in frustration.W. E.

B. Du Bois discovered his difference a young age: “Then it dawned on me with a certain suddenness that I was different from others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil (Du Bois, 45). ” As with the other primary characters mentioned, Du Bois was faced with dilemma of how to deal with the obvious inequality that he dealt with: “…I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat them stringy heads (Du Bois, 44).”In spite of his efforts Du Bois could never span the chasm that he and all others of his race endured. Through education, Du Bois was able to better himself in social class among his own people and succeed to the point of being a subject of this essay, yet neither he, nor his African-American successors would close the separation between the race that once enslaved and the race that was once enslaved. The separation faced by Du Bois was created without his involvement and was larger than his or any individual’s ability to repair.

This separation of groups of people is as old as time itself.All things considered, Du Bois handled his inability to gain equality with grace and quiet, intellectual rebellion. Many without his education and skill with words express their displeasure of the separation of themselves and their dreams with greater ferocity. Walter Lee Younger, the antagonist in Hansberry’s play, “A Raisin in the Sun” felt held down by the enormity of generations of struggle and poverty. Walter Lee’s burning desire to break free of poverty and gain financial success clouded his responsibility as head of the household and made him a slave to money he did not have.He was enslaved by the love of money.

The poverty and the lack of support from his family fueled his ever edgy fire of discontentment. It is only through his placement of his family in a worse predicament did he break free of the bonds of money. This new found freedom eliminated the separation between he and his family, but like Du Bois, things went unchanged in his world. Walter Lee would never achieve his dream in the play. Racism, poverty and corruption kept Walter Lee from achieving his dream and he could not overcome them as he burdened with the fate that he had not part in receiving.