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Yes but, my dense obtuse brain thinks there is a reason for the speaker's humour and the neighbour's stubborn response... and he is actually tempting these apples to his neighbour, which would be why the neighbour wants the wall, and tradition says, don't bite that apple, you'll end up like Adam!Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
I really wasn’t referring to you when I said that. However, I am tempted to say that the reason is that the speaker is humorous and the neighbour stubborn.Quote:
Originally Posted by jackyyyy
Hmmm…Your response to poetry reminds me of a line from Annie Hall:Quote:
Originally Posted by jackyyyy
'Why do you always reduce my animal urges to psychoanalytic categories?'
Actually, I am not predisposed that way, thankfully. I reduce it because 'animal urges' often end up on television, along with the XXX-files. So, you agree 'S' is humerous and 'N' is stubborn. But, you will not offer why so? We have Billy Connolly on the one side and Milton on the other, and hmm, thats why there's a wall.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
Much of the time, I really have no idea what you are talking about. I don’t mind that but I often also have no idea whether you want or do not want a reply.Quote:
Originally Posted by jackyyyy
Do you mean that I will offer no evidence from the poem that this is so or that I offer no reasons why this is so?Quote:
Originally Posted by jackyyyy
Now, you see, jackyyyy, it’s comments like this that make me wonder if your favourite song is Puff, The Magic Dragon. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by jackyyyy
Pretty much what a lot of other people have already said.Quote:
Originally Posted by ktd222
On the surface he is talking about mending a wall with a neighbour.
The subtext is the psychological walls that people erect against each other.
That is the obvious stuff - the deceptively simple stuff.
Under that, we have his humorous notion that there is something that hates walls and knocks them down each year, (which most people here seem to assume is in nature, because of the mention of frozen-ground-swells, but I am not sure he's really being that specific). All he is really saying is that each year, there is more damage than just what you might expect to have come from hunters and the like, so he has invented this idea of a 'something' - as he says later 'I could say 'elves' to him' - he is trying to amuse his neighbour by talking about his daft idea of a something, but the neighbour is way too practical a type to be carried by such flights of fancy. Similarly, he tries to question the point of the wall at all when the two fields have no animals to fence in (again in a humorous manner) but is rebuffed by the old man's 'received wisdom' yet again.
Throughout the poem we are reminded that the neighbour takes rebuilding the wall very seriously, whereas Frost sees it as 'just another kind of outdoor game', a not-unpleasant diversion. the interplay between the two disparate central characters is beautifully portrayed. Frost with his poetic, questioning, mercurial mind and the neighbour with his dull, set-in-stone outlook.
And this difference in outlook is also their wall - every bit as real as the physical one.
I really like this. I think you articulated it perfectly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe
Finally had the time to properly catch up with what's been going on here. I agree with Xam. and The Unnamable that there's a sense of humor at play in the interaction between the two men in this poem. I think that's one of its best qualities. I also like Xam.'s earlier remarks:
I think what Xamonas says above is very true about Frost's work, and expresses again much of what I was trying to say earlier about the poem, and what I think Melanie was agreeing with in her response to me/what I quoted of the Raab article. As Virgil points out above in his schematic of the poem, Frost sets up several sets of polarities in the poem, which makes it seem like it's founded on simple dichotomies, but I think the poem is really trying to express a dissatisfaction with any set dichotomy, or with the strong identification with one "polarity," to use Virg's term. The problem is not so much the wall. I don't think he's crazy about the wall, but I don't think that's what actually what bothers him most. I think it's the unreflecting nature of his neighbor's devotion to the wall.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe
:lol: Where did that come from? It was so random I had to laugh, and since I was picking up a pic. for one of the image games anyway, I couldn't help but be curious what it would look like (they have remarkably similar hairstyles);) :Quote:
Originally Posted by Jackyyyy
http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e3...oly-milton.jpg
People write something if they feel like it, its not mandatory. They are replying directly or simply throwing something into the pot. I don't find this forum is insisting on formality, just politeness. With that, I believe people should feel free to express themselves in their way, not forced to a uniform style. I find it important to analyse and find something concrete, landmarks if you like, to base an assumption on. Yes, I do want to reduce it, and I alluded to your reference to Annie Hall, and I thought that was obvious, but my mention was confusing, and it failed. Cutting up the content to make it more accessible is also part and parcel of analysing it. So if Annie Hall is questioned me doing it, then she would question anybody doing it, including yourself. I am having a hard time explaining something I see here, and I don't think what I see is without any 'concrete'. I appreciate, however, that if I fail to explain it, the notion is lost.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
No, of course you do, but on this occasion, you wrote, 'I am tempted to say...', which is quite a departure from when you were more sure:Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
There is nothing wrong with being reserved, just surprising sometimes. I happen to disagree with this assumption based only on his name, but its okay to throw ideas around, else we stagnate.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
I know that Virgil but do you really think Robert Frost didn’t think of frost when he wrote those lines? Come on!
Well, apart from being highly creative and educational, its also fun. I am not going to pull my hair out over a bag of words, but I will never dismiss an idea, nomatter how far fetched, if there is an inkling of fact that could sway it another way. There are several things in this piece that I think are concrete enough to make me put in the extra effort. If my view is too radical for others then thats fine too.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
Having said all that, the clarity of vision Xamonas displays in his write-up is awesome.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill...the speaker is the one trying to engage the neighbor in this conversation, but at the same time, as you read further on the tone of the speaker gets more hostile than merely humorous questioning about the needless function of a wall. Whiner!Quote:
Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe
It is a 'game'-and gaming involves competiton. What's the speaker trying to prove or win at? The process of building a wall may seem serious to the neighbor, but just as equal the 'need' to not have a wall is just as serious to the speaker.Quote:
Throughout the poem we are reminded that the neighbour takes rebuilding the wall very seriously, whereas Frost sees it as 'just another kind of outdoor game', a not-unpleasant diversion. the interplay between the two disparate central characters is beautifully portrayed. Frost with his poetic, questioning, mercurial mind and the neighbour with his dull, set-in-stone outlook.
And this difference in outlook is also their wall - every bit as real as the physical one.
I don't really see hostile - not overtly hostile at any rate - he is merely questioning why they are going through this ritual of wall-repairing and trying to get his neighbour to question too. His descriptions of the neighbour in the poem are derogatory, but his words to him are not.Quote:
Originally Posted by ktd222
I don't quite agree with you there ktd. If the narrator 'needs' not to have the wall, why is he helping to repair it? He questions the need for it - he doesn't deny the need for it outright. And games can also involve teamwork, not just competition - even though he says "One on a side", they are both working towards the same end.Quote:
It is a 'game'-and gaming involves competiton. What's the speaker trying to prove or win at? The process of building a wall may seem serious to the neighbor, but just as equal the 'need' to not have a wall is just as serious to the speaker.
I agree, not overtly hostile.Quote:
I don't really see hostile - not overtly hostile at any rate - he is merely questioning why they are going through this ritual of wall-repairing and trying to get his neighbour to question too. His descriptions of the neighbour in the poem are derogatory, but his words to him are not.
When else is he going to be able to implant these thoughts in the neighbor's mind about the needless function of a wall. Like you said, Throughout the poem we are reminded that the neighbour takes rebuilding the wall very seriously, whereas Frost sees it as 'just another kind of outdoor game', a not-unpleasant diversion. Alternative motive?Quote:
I don't quite agree with you there ktd. If the narrator 'needs' not to have the wall, why is he helping to repair it? He questions the need for it - he doesn't deny the need for it outright. And games can also involve teamwork, not just competition - even though he says "One on a side", they are both working towards the same end.
Great! then they both want the wall.
He does the job because it's "one of those jobs that has to be done". You paint the fence, repair the tiles on the roof, wash the car, mend the wall. There is quite obviously an implied tradition of wall-mending in this situation. It's a shared wall, so both parties have an obligation to repair it. Frost is questioning this tradition; questioning the need for the wall at all. His neighbour isn't interested. I would imagine that that wall went on getting repaired for many years - by the two of them, or their descendants.
An implication of the poem to me is not that we should necessarily reject traditions such as wall-mending (walls between fields and walls between people) but that we should question whether they are applicable to a particular case rather than blithely continuing with the status quo.
I don't see anything more revolutionary than this in Frost's POV here.
This is a man made wall.
Walls do not appear for no reason.
Somebody put the wall there for a reason.
Has the reason disappeared? Well, the job of mending has to be done, because people, animals, nature, whatever, keeps trying to pull it down, and.... they want the wall to stay up. Else, why mend it.
Tradition does not make people waste their time mending walls. For sure, the neighbour is very serious about it. Speaker, on the other hand, is a wily old goat playing mischief.. and, he is the one with the apples.
Or, the neighbor sees nothing wrong with the wall; while the speaker, through his imagining of the function of the wall, injects connotations into that wall which would otherwise just be a wall.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe
;)You got me going unto I saw the word 'apple'.Quote:
Originally Posted by jackyyyy