Tension and Conflict in Mending Wall :: Mending Wall Essays

Tension and Conflict in Mending Wall The conflict in Mending Wall develops as the verbaliser reveals more and more of himself while portraying a native Yankee 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 kind of barrier behind which the persona, for all his dislike of walls, finds himself confined. But at the beginning, the Yankee sodbuster is not present, and the persona introduces himself in a reflective, offhanded way, musing about walls Something there is that doesnt pick out a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it And spills the upper boulders in the sun, And makes gaps tear down ii can pass abreast. Clearly, he is a casual sort. He broaches no difficult subjects, nor does he insist on talking about himself yet halt is at his best in a sentence like t his. Through the language and rhythm of the lines we gain a faint but unmistakable mother wit 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 filmion. He combines the indefinite pronoun something with the loose expletive construction there is to evoke a ruminative vagueness even before raising the central subject of walls. A more straightforward character (like the Yankee farmer) might condense this opening line to three direct words Something dislikes walls. But Frost employs informal, indulgently convoluted language to provide a linguistic texture for the dramatic conflict that develops later in the poem. By using syntactical inversion (something there is . . .) to introduce a rambling, undisciplined series of relati ve clauses and compound verb phrases (that doesnt love . . . that sends . . . and spills . . . and makes . . .), he evinces his personas unorthodox, unrestrained imagination. Not entirely does this speaker believe in a strange force, a seemingly intelligent, natural or supernatural something that sends the frozen-ground-swell to ravage the wall, but his speech is also aerated 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 poster of the destructive process.