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“Mending Wall” features a first-person speaker who describes a recent experience of helping his neighbor repair the wall that separates their two properties. Although the speaker is anonymous, his status as a rural landowner in the early twentieth century makes it reasonable to assume that he is a man, probably white, possibly in middle age. What’s most important, though, is that the speaker sees himself as open-minded and progressive—at least compared to his neighbor. The speaker sees his neighbor as “an old-stone savage” (line 40) who thoughtlessly repeats hackneyed tropes about good fences making good neighbors. By contrast, the speaker questions the deeper logic of borders. His innate skepticism leads him to recognize that the wall separating their properties has no functional purpose, and also leads him to envision a future where they no longer have to work so hard to maintain it. Yet for all the speaker’s progressive skepticism, he nonetheless goes on mending the wall year after year. He may well recognize the absurdity of the wall, yet he ultimately refrains from trying to convince his neighbor that it isn’t necessary. The speaker is therefore just as responsible as his neighbor when it comes to maintaining the status quo.

Next section The Neighbor

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