This wall-building act seems ancient, for it is described
in ritual terms. It involves “spells” to counteract the “elves,”
and the neighbor appears a Stone-Age savage while he hoists and
transports a boulder. Well, wall-building is ancient
and enduring—the building of the first walls, both literal and figurative,
marked the very foundation of society. Unless you are an absolute
anarchist and do not mind livestock munching your lettuce, you probably
recognize the need for literal boundaries. Figuratively, rules and
laws are walls; justice is the process of wall-mending. The ritual
of wall maintenance highlights the dual and complementary nature
of human society: The rights of the individual (property boundaries,
proper boundaries) are affirmed through the affirmation of other
individuals’ rights. And it demonstrates another benefit of community;
for this communal act, this civic “game,” offers a good excuse for
the speaker to interact with his neighbor. Wall-building is social,
both in the sense of “societal” and “sociable.” What seems an act
of anti-social self-confinement can, thus, ironically, be interpreted
as a great social gesture. Perhaps the speaker does believe
that good fences make good neighbors— for again, it is he who
initiates the wall-mending.
Of course, a little bit of mutual trust, communication,
and goodwill would seem to achieve the same purpose between well-disposed
neighbors—at least where there are no cows. And the poem says it
twice: “something there is that does not love a wall.” There is
some intent and value in wall-breaking, and there is some powerful
tendency toward this destruction. Can it be simply that wall-breaking
creates the conditions that facilitate wall-building? Are the groundswells
a call to community- building—nature’s nudge toward concerted action?
Or are they benevolent forces urging the demolition of traditional,
small-minded boundaries? The poem does not resolve this question,
and the narrator, who speaks for the groundswells but acts as a fence-builder,
remains a contradiction.
Many of Frost’s poems can be reasonably interpreted as
commenting on the creative process; “Mending Wall” is no exception.
On the basic level, we can find here a discussion of the construction-disruption
duality of creativity. Creation is a positive act—a mending or a
building. Even the most destructive-seeming creativity results in
a change, the building of some new state of being: If you tear down
an edifice, you create a new view for the folks living in the house
across the way. Yet creation is also disruptive: If nothing else,
it disrupts the status quo. Stated another way, disruption is creative:
It is the impetus that leads directly, mysteriously (as with the
groundswells), to creation. Does the stone wall embody this duality?
In any case, there is something about “walking the line”—and building
it, mending it, balancing each stone with equal parts skill and
spell—that evokes the mysterious and laborious act of making poetry.
On a level more specific to the author, the question of
boundaries and their worth is directly applicable to Frost’s poetry.
Barriers confine, but for some people they also encourage freedom
and productivity by offering challenging frameworks within which
to work. On principle, Frost did not write free verse. His creative process
involved engaging poetic form (the rules, tradition, and boundaries—the
walls—of the poetic world) and making it distinctly his own. By
maintaining the tradition of formal poetry in unique ways, he was
simultaneously a mender and breaker of walls.
