Mending Wall, The Death Of The Hired Man, And Birches By Robert Frost

In this essay I will be talking about a Modernist era writer. This writer mostly wrote poems, and his name was Robert Frost. Some of his most famous works include “Mending Wall”, “The Death of the Hired Man”, and “Birches”. All three of these poems were actually quite hard to understand and dissect, but after reading them a few times over i was able to do it. The first poem we will take a look at is “Mending Wall”, written in 1914. After that we will pick apart “The Death of a Hired Man”, written in 1914 as well, and finally, we will also take a look at “Birches”, written in 1916. All three of these poems were written very well and all seemed to have a fluent flow to them. This makes them easier to read, but they can still be a bit challenging …show more content…
As stated before this poem was written in 1914. This poem is the first work in Frost's second book of poetry, “North of Boston,” which was published upon his return from England in 1915. While living in England with his family, Frost was exceptionally homesick for the farm in New Hampshire where he had lived with his wife from 1900 to 1909. Despite the eventual failure of the farm, Frost associated his time in New Hampshire with a peaceful, rural sensibility that he instilled in the majority of his subsequent poems. “Mending Wall” is autobiographical on an even more specific level: a French-Canadian named Napoleon Guay had been Frost’s neighbor in New Hampshire, and the two had often walked along their property line and repaired the wall that separated their land. Ironically, the most famous line of the poem (“Good fences make good neighbors”) was not invented by Frost himself, but was rather a phrase that Guay frequently declared to Frost during their walks. This particular adage was a popular colonial proverb in the middle of the 17th century, but variations of it also appeared in Norway (“There must be a fence between good neighbors”), Germany (“Between neighbor’s gardens a fence is good”), Japan (“Build a fence even between intimate friends”), and even India (“Love your neighbor, but do not throw down the dividing wall”). With that being said, I would recommend you read the poem to further understand where I …show more content…
This poem was significantly longer than the previous, but has the same intriguing factors. This poem contains many of the stereotypical characteristics of Frost’s poetry, particularly the rural environment, the everyday struggle of the farm couple over their relationship to the farmhand, and the colloquial dialogue. The blank verse form makes the text extremely clear, and Frost even breaks up the stanzas by employing dialogue. In the poem, Frost outlines the traditions of duty and hard work that he explores in many of his other poems. Silas returns to the farm so that he can fulfill his broken contract to Warren and die honorably, having fulfilled his duty to the family and to the community. Silas’ return to the farm also signals the importance of the work that he performed on the farm as a way to give his life meaning and satisfaction. Silas does not have any children or close family to provide a sense of fulfillment in his last hours; only the sense of duty and the satisfaction of hard work can provide him with