One of the 21 Poems

Mending Wall by Robert Frost



I had sort of a hard time understanding this poem. I got that the wall separates the two neighbors and that the one neighbor is being sketchy since he doesn't want his neighbor to tear down the wall or even see what he has on his side of the wall, but the big idea just wasn't clicking for some reason. The one part that I was really trying to analyze was when the man's neighbor kept repeating the phrase "good fences make good neighbors." It seems as though the man's neighbor is isolating himself from society and finds a comfort in nature. I found the wall to be very ironic, the neighbor uses it to separate himself but that's the only thing keeping the two men from never speaking to one another.  After reading I looked up what good fences make good neighbors really meant, to me it was only the neighbor's excuse to not have the man come over or to have the wall knocked down.