Tension and Conflict in Mending Wall :: Mending Wall Essays

Tension and Conflict in Mending border The conflict in Mending Wall develops as the verbaliser reveals much and more of himself temporary hookup portraying a native northern and responding to the regional spirit he embodies. The opposition between observer and observed--and the tension produced by the observers awareness of the difference--is crucial to the poem. Ultimately, the very knowledge of this opposition becomes itself a diverseness of barrier behind which the persona, for all his dislike of walls, finds himself confined. But at the beginning, the Yankee farmer is not present, and the persona introduces himself in a reflective, offhanded way, speculate about walls Something there is that doesnt love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. Clearly, he is a cursory sort. He broaches no difficult subjects, nor does he insist on public lecture about himself yet cover is at h is best in a sentence like this. Through the language and rhythm of the lines we gain a faint still unmistakable sense of the poems conflict. Like the frozen-ground-swell, it gathers strength while lying buried beneath the denotative surface of the poem. From the start, we suspect that the speaker has more sympathy than he admits for whatever it is that doesnt love a wall. Frost establishes at the outset his speakers discursive in deportion. He combines the indefinite pronoun something with the loose jinx construction there is to evoke a ruminative vagueness even originally raising the central subject of walls. A more straightforward caseful (like the Yankee farmer) might condense this opening line to common chord direct words Something dislikes walls. But Frost employs informal, indulgently convoluted language to show a linguistic texture for the dramatic conflict that develops later in the poem. By using syntactical inversion (something there is . . .) to introduce a ramblin g, undisciplined series of relative clauses and compound verb phrases (that doesnt love . . . that sends . . . and spills . . . and makes . . .), he evinces his personas unorthodox, uninhibited imagination. Not only does this speaker believe in a exotic force, a seemingly intelligent, natural or supernatural something that sends the frozen-ground-swell to ravage the wall, but his speech is also charged with a deep sensitivity to it. The three active verbs (sends, spills, makes) that impel the second, third, and fourth lines forward are completed by direct objects that suggest his close observation of the destructive process.