1a. What is the wall like in the spring? What has torn down the wall? Why does the speaker contact his neighbor?
2a. What does the speaker tell his neighbor as they repair the wall that is a reason not to build the fence? What quote does the speaker's neighbor repeat?
3a. What would the speaker like to know before he builds a wall?
4a. Identify the clues that reveal the relationship between the speaker and his neighbor.
5a. How effective is the speaker in getting the neighbor to consider a new perspective about the wall?
1b. The speaker says, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." What doesn't? Which character makes an attempt at friendship? How does he make this attempt? What is ironic about the wall?
2b. Why might the neighbor want to have a wall where one is not absolutely necessary? What does the neighbor's desire for a wall tell you about him?
3b. How does the neighbor look, according to the speaker? What reveals that the speaker doesn't totally trust his neighbor?
4b. Considering the nature of their relationship, who do you think makes a better neighbor, and why?
5b. Besides walls or fences, what other things keep neighbors apart?
Symbol. What does the wall in the poem symbolize? Why does the speaker question the value of walls?
Character. Fill in the character chart below for the speaker's neighbor. Is the speaker's neighbor the protagonist or the antagonist?
1a. What does the husband see before his wife sees him? What does the husband come to understand she sees?
2a. What kind of "creature" does the wife think her husband is (line 16)?
3a. What are the husband's words "nearly always" to his wife (line 48)?
4a. What differences exist in how the husband and wife express their grief about the death of their infant son? How has the death of their child ruptured their marriage?
5a. Compare the styles of grieving of the husband and the wife. Which is more understandable?
1b. How might the wife's actions have been different if she had seen her husband watching her at the top of the stair?
2b. Why does the wife challenge the husband to tell her what he sees? What doesn't the wife understand about her husband?
3b. How does the husband demonstrate he cares about fixing the rupture in their marriage?
4b. Predict what will happen to the husband and wife beyond the end of the poem.
5b. If you were a friend of the couple, what obstacles in their characters and relationship would you have to help them overcome in order to have a healthy marriage?
Metaphor. Consider the following lines from "Home Burial": "I can repeat the very words you were saying: / 'Three foggy mornings and one rainy day / Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.'" How are these lines an expression of the man's sense of loss? Does his wife understand that they are such an expression? What does she think that they mean? What has happened to the communication between the man and woman?
Diction. Review the definition for diction in the Handbook of Literary Terms. Then make a chart. On the left, write examples of the wife's speech. On the right, identify the type of diction the quotations exemplify. Complete the chart below. On the left, write examples of the wife's speech. On the right, identify the type of diction the quotations exemplify.
1. Imagine you are the speaker in "Mending Wall." Write a letter to your neighbor, stating what you think makes for good neighbors besides a fence.
2. Imagine that you are a therapist for the husband and wife in "Home Burial." Write a monologue giving the couple suggestions on how to improve their communication about their grief over their child's death. Provide separate suggestions for the husband and the wife.
3. Imagine that you are Robert Frost. Write a paragraph for The Amherst Student explaining what writing a poem means to you. Imagine the paragraph is the last paragraph of the Letter to The Amherst Student in which Frost clearly summarizes his philosophy about creativity and form.
The Functions of Sentences. Write whether each of the following sentences is declarative, interrogative, imperative, or exclamatory.
1. Something there is that doesn't love a wall.
2. "Tell me what it is."
3. "Can't a man speak of his own child he's lost?"
4. There is at least so much good in the world that it admits of form and the making of form.
5. "There you go sneering now!"
Timeline. On paper, make a timeline of key personal and literary events in Robert Frost's life. You may find a biography of him at http://www.poets.org.
Modernist Painting. Research a modernist painting that interests you. Describe what makes the painting modernist.
Painting title, artist, year:
Research Findings:
Sources Used:
