Analyses of Robert Frost’s Poem.doc

1、1Analyses of Robert Frosts PoemAbstract: Frost plays such an important role in the literature history and his work takes such an important part place in poetry fields that it makes sense to study his character, living circumstances and cultural backgrounds affections to his poems and the representat

2、ion in his poems. Key words: pastoral；philosophical Frost was one of the most popular poets in America during his lifetime and was frequently called the countrys unofficial poet laureate. His work took an important part place in literature history. His life was a miraculous one. And it makes sense t

3、o study his character, living circumstance and cultural background affections to his poems and the representation in his poems. His verse at first was terrifying, showing a dark side of human life, human society, and the problems, which confronted his own life. By the end of his life, his poems were

4、 filled with more sunshine. He was more pleasant His poems, as what he had said, began in delight and ended in wisdom. Many of his poems have high reputation, and in this thesis I will take “Mending Wall” for example. 2Most of Robert Frosts major poetry was written before 1930, although he continued

5、 writing all the way through the 1950s and into the early 1960s. “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost is a poem in which the characteristics of vocabulary, rhythm and other aspects of poetic technique combine in a fashion that articulates, in detail, the experience and the opposing convictions that the po

6、em describes and discusses. Here is the poem: 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. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Wh

7、ere they have left not one stone on a stone, .But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk t

8、he line 3And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. 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! We wear our fingers rough wit

9、h handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, Good fences make good n

10、eighbors. Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: Why do they make good neighbors? Isnt it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall Id ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. 4Som

11、ething there is that doesnt love a wall, That wants it down. I could say Elves to him, But its not elves exactly, and Id rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me Not

12、of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his fathers saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors. A stone wall separates the speakers property from his neighbors. In spring, the two meet to walk the wall and jointly make repair

13、s. The speaker sees no reason for the wall to be kept-there are no cows to be contained, just apple and pine trees. He does not believe in walls for the sake of walls. The neighbor resorts to an old adage: “Good fences make good neighbors.“ The speaker remains unconvinced and mischievously presses t

14、he neighbor to look beyond the old-fashioned folly of such reasoning. His neighbor will not be swayed. The speaker envisions his neighbor as a holdover from a justifiably outmoded era, a living example of a dark-age mentality. But the 5neighbor simply repeats the adage. Blank verse is the baseline m

15、eter of this poem, but few of the lines march along in blank verses characteristic lock-step iambs, five abreast. Frost maintains five stressed syllables per line, but he varies the feet extensively to sustain the natural speech-like quality of the verse. There are no stanza breaks, obvious end-rhym

16、es, or rhyming patterns, but many of the end-words share an assonance (e.g., wall, hill, balls, wall, and well sun, thing, stone, mean, line, and again or game, them, and him twice). Internal rhymes, too, are subtle, slanted, and conceivably coincidental. The vocabulary is all of a piece-no fancy wo

17、rds, all short (only one word, another, is of three syllables), all conversational-and this is perhaps why the words resonate so consummately with each other in sound and feel. It is steeped in levels of meaning implied by its well-wrought metaphoric suggestions. These implications inspire numerous

18、interpretations and make definitive readings suspect. Here are but a few things to think about as you reread the poem. The image at the heart of “Mending Wall“ is arresting: two men meeting on terms of civility and neighborliness to build a barrier between them. They do so out of tradition, out of h

19、abit. 6Yet the very earth conspires against them and makes their task Sisyphean. Sisyphus, you may recall, is the figure in Greek mythology condemned perpetually to push a boulder up a hill, only to have the boulder roll down again. These men push boulders back on top of the wall; yet just as inevit

20、ably, whether at the hand of hunters or sprites, or the frost and thaw of natures invisible hand, the boulders tumble down again. Still, the neighbors persist. The poem, thus, seems to meditate conventionally on three grand themes: barrier-building (segregation, in the broadest sense of the word), t

21、he doomed nature of this enterprise, and our persistence in this activity regardless. But, as we so often see when we look closely at Frosts best poems, what begins in folksy straight forwardness ends in complex ambiguity. The speaker would have us believe that there are two types of people: those w

22、ho stubbornly insist on building superfluous walls (with clinches as their justification) and those who would dispense with this practice-wall-builders and wall-breakers. But are these impulses so easily separable? And what does the poem really say about the necessity of boundaries? The speaker may

23、scorn his neighbors obstinate wall-7building, may observe the activity with humorous detachment, but he himself goes to the wall at all times of the year to mend the damage done by hunters; it is the speaker who contacts the neighbor at wall-mending time to set the annual appointment. Which person,

24、then, is the real wall-builder? The speaker says he sees no need for a wall here, but this implies that there may be a need for a wall elsewhere- “where there are cows,“ for example. Yet the speaker must derive something, some use, some satisfaction, out of the exercise of wall-building, or why woul

25、d he initiate it here? There is something in him that does love a wall, or at least the act of making a wall. This wall-building act seems ancient, for it is described in ritual terms. It involves “spells“ to counteract the “elves,“ and the neighbor appears a Stone-Age savage while he hoists and tra

26、nsports a boulder. Well, wall-building is ancient and enduring-the building of the first walls, both literal and figurative, marked the very foundation of society. Unless you are an absolute anarchist and do not mind livestock munching your lettuce, you probably recognize the need for literal bounda

27、ries. Figuratively, rules and laws are walls; justice is the process of wall-mending. The ritual of wall maintenance highlights the dual and complementary nature of human society: 8The rights of the individual (property boundaries, proper boundaries) are affirmed through the affirmation of other ind

28、ividuals rights. And it demonstrates another benefit of community; for this communal act, this civic “game,“ offers a good excuse for the speaker to interact with his neighbor. Wall-building is social, both in the sense of “societal“ and “sociable.“ What seems an act of anti-social self-confinement

29、can, thus, ironically, be interpreted as a great social gesture. Perhaps the speaker does believe that good fences make good neighbors- for again, it is he who initiates the wall-mending. Of course, a little bit of mutual trust, communication, and goodwill would seem to achieve the same purpose betw

30、een well-disposed neighbors-at least where there are no cows. And the poem says it twice: “something there is that does not love a wall.“ There is some intent and value in wall-breaking, and there is some powerful tendency toward this destruction. Can it be simply that wall-breaking creates the cond

31、itions that facilitate wall-building? Are the groundswells a call to community- building-natures nudge toward concerted action? Or are they benevolent forces urging the demolition of traditional, small-minded boundaries? The poem does not resolve this question, and the narrator, who speaks for the g

32、roundswells but 9acts as a fence-builder, remains a contradiction. Many of Frosts poems can be reasonably interpreted as commenting on the creative process; “Mending Wall“ is no exception. On the basic level, we can find here a discussion of the construction-disruption duality of creativity. Creatio

33、n is a positive act-a mending or a building. Even the most destructive-seeming creativity results in a change, the building of some new state of being: If you tear down an edifice, you create a new view for the folks living in the house across the way. Yet creation is also disruptive: If nothing els

34、e, it disrupts the status quo. Stated another way, disruption is creative: It is the impetus that leads directly, mysteriously (as with the groundswells), to creation. Does the stone wall embody this duality? In any case, there is something about “walking the line“-and building it, mending it, balan

35、cing each stone with equal parts skill and spell-that evokes the mysterious and laborious act of making poetry. On a level more specific to the author, the question of boundaries and their worth is directly applicable to Frosts poetry. Barriers confine, but for some people they also encourage freedo

36、m and productivity by offering challenging frameworks within which to work. On principle, Frost did not 10write free verse. His creative process involved engaging poetic form (the rules, tradition, and boundaries-the walls-of the poetic world) and making it distinctly his own. By maintaining the tradition of formal poetry in unique ways, he was simultaneously a mender and breaker of walls. 作者简介： 罗粲（1985.10-)，女，湖北武汉人，汉族，本科，助教，现就职于武昌职业学院，研究方向：英语文学。