Read the excerpt from Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall." He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours." Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: "Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd 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 of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he like having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours." What does the word grasped connote in this poem?

Question

English

Andrea Kidd

2 June, 02:51

Read the excerpt from Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall." He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours." Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: "Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd 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 of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he like having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours." What does the word grasped connote in this poem?

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Jensen Patterson · Answer 1

"Grasped" shows the neighbor's primitive qualities; he is like an "old-stone savage armed" because he cannot conceive (or grasp, here used ironically) of thinking beyond what his father taught him: that fences make good neighbors. So, grasp really is both ironic (he can grasp the rock, but not the idea that maybe a fence isn't necessary here) and showing the primitive grasping of the rock as if it were a weapon.