Question

3. Lines 23-26: What are two possible interpretations of these lines? Which one do

Answer 1

I looked this question up. It is about the poem "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost.

Answer and Explanation:

3. Lines 23-26: What are two possible interpretations of these lines? Which one do  you think is most likely Frost's intended meaning?

Let's take a look at lines 23-26:

There where it is we do not need a wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

An eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

The first possible meaning is a more literal one. Frost can mean to say that his own and his neighbor's properties are so different that there is no need to have a wall to separate. They grow different plants, so it is easy to know what belongs to whom.

The second possible meaning is a lot less literal. Frost may be referring to the difference between himself and his neighbor. He does not think they need a wall separating them because there is a natural barrier between the two of them. His neighbor need not be afraid of being disturbed, for Frost is so unlike him that he will most likely never even try. I believe this is the meaning Frost intended.

Lines 27-45: What difference between the two characters is revealed through the  use of dialogue? What evidence from the poem supports your answer?

Frost has a questioning and playful nature. He also has the ability to see a lot in a wall, all of the barriers it represents. He worries about what a wall will keep out as well as what it will keep in. He is, by nature, more open-minded:

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head

His neighbor, on the other hand, is set in his ways. He does not wish to listen to Frost. He will not change his mind, for he has accepted something as an unchangeable truth:

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

[...]

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’