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Dialogue

One of the unique features of “Mending Wall” is its inclusion of dialogue. When the speaker and his neighbor work together to repair the damage to their shared wall, they have a rare opportunity to talk. The strange quality of their dialogue gives the reader important insight into the nature of their relationship. Initially, their dialogue seems to focus narrowly on the work at hand. The first bit of quoted speech in the poem suggests a friendly atmosphere fostered by mild frustration with the work (lines 17–19):

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”

It isn’t clear which man is being quoted in the final line, but the sentiment expressed seems to be shared between them. As the poem continues, however, the representation of their dialogue becomes strange. For instance, the speaker paraphrases his own speech while directly quoting his neighbor’s (lines 25–27):

My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

More curiously still, instead of responding to his neighbor directly, the speaker continues the conversation—but in his own head. In lines 30–36, the speaker interrogates the symbolic function of walls, and he puts this lengthy speech in quotation marks as if he actually said these words. It becomes clear, however, that he chose not to speak his thoughts aloud. And yet his neighbor still seems to respond to the speaker’s unspoken dialogue, once again affirming his original position: “Good fences make good neighbors” (line 45). The strange quality of this dialogue emphasizes how the relationship between these men has as many holes as the wall they’re mending.

Proverbs

Proverbs play a significant role throughout the poem. The term proverb refers to any short, pithy saying that is meant to convey a general truth or piece of wisdom. The most obvious proverb in the poem is spoken twice by the speaker’s neighbor. When the speaker suggests that the wall that divides their properties isn’t all that functional since neither man keeps livestock, his neighbor says simply: “Good fences make good neighbors.” When Frost wrote “Mending Wall,” this saying had already long been in common use. In fact, the phrase was—and remains—so common as to be little more than a piece of clichéd wisdom. The speaker emphasizes the clichéd aspect of this proverb when his neighbor repeats the saying at the end of the poem (lines 43–45):

He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

To the speaker’s mind, his neighbor has been thoroughly seduced by this proverbial wisdom, which he likely got from his father. So attached is he that he has no capacity to think critically about it. Yet despite his snarky reaction to his neighbor’s saying, the speaker seems equally attached to his own proverbial wisdom, which he also repeats twice in the poem: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” (lines 1 and 35).

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