1、Robert Frost,Mending Wall,罗伯特弗罗斯特, 20世纪最受欢迎的美国诗人。因其当过新英格兰的鞋匠、教师和农场主，所以作品多从农村生活中取题材；与19世纪的诗人有很多共同之处，但相比之下，却又较少具有现代派气息。 他曾赢得4次普利策奖和许多其他的奖励及荣誉，被称之为美国文学中的桂冠诗人。 然而在他的下半生，才赢得大众对其诗歌作品的承认，并最终树立起了一位伟大的文学家的形象。,Robert Frost简介,Mending Wall is a metaphorical(隐喻的) poem written in blank verse, published in 1914. T
2、his poem is set in the countryside and is about one man questioning why he and his neighbor must rebuild the stone wall dividing their farms each spring. The stone wall at Frosts farm in Derry, which he described in Mending wall.,While living in England with his family, Frost was exceptionally homes
3、ick 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
4、on an even more specific level: a French-Canadian named Napoleon Guay had been Frosts neighbor in New Hampshire, and the two had often walked along their property line and repaired the wall that separated their land.,Summary,Every year, two neighbors meet to repair the stone wall that divides their
5、property. The narrator is skeptical of this tradition, unable to understand the need for a wall when there is no livestock to be contained on the property, only apples and pine trees. He does not believe that a wall should exist simply for the sake of existing. Moreover, he cannot help but notice th
6、at the natural world seems to dislike the wall as much as he does: mysterious gaps appear, boulders fall for no reason.,The neighbor, on the other hand, asserts that the wall is crucial to maintaining their relationship, asserting, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Over the course of the mending, t
7、he narrator attempts to convince his neighbor otherwise and accuses him of being old-fashioned for maintaining the tradition so strictly. No matter what the narrator says, though, the neighbor stands his ground, repeating only: “Good fences make good neighbors.”.,Something there is that doesnt love
8、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.,有一样东西，它大概是不喜欢墙，它使得墙脚下的冻地涨得隆起，大白天的把墙头石块弄得纷纷落：使得墙裂了缝，二人并肩都走得过。,Frost,The work of hunters is another thing:I have come after them and made repairWhere they have left not
9、 one stone on a stone,But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,To please the yelping dogs.,士绅们行猎时又是另一番糟蹋：他们要掀开每块石头上的石头，我总是跟在他们后面去修补，但是他们要把兔子从隐处赶出来，讨好那群汪汪叫的狗。,The speaker and readers,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 m
10、y neighbor know beyond the hill;,我说的墙缝是怎么生的，谁也没看见，谁也没听见但是到了春季补墙时，就看见在那里。我通知了住在山那边的邻居；,And on a day we meet to walk the lineAnd set the wall between us once again.We keep the wall between us as we go.,有一天我们约会好，巡视地界一番，在我们两家之间再把墙重新砌起。我们走的时候，中间隔着一垛墙。,To each the boulders that have fallen to each.And som
11、e are loaves and some so nearly ballsWe have to use a spell to make them balance:“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!“,落在各边的石头，由各自去料理。有些是长块的，有些几乎圆得像球需要一点魔术才能把它们放稳当：“老实呆在那里，等我们转过身再落下！”,We wear our fingers rough with handling them.Oh, just another kind of out-door game,One on a side. It com
12、es to little more:,我们搬弄石头把手指都磨粗了。啊！这不过又是一种户外游戏，一个人站在一边。此外没有多少用处：,Metaphor: wall-mending process,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 acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines,I tell him. He only says,“Good fences make good neighb
13、ors.“,在墙那地方，我们根本不需要墙：他那边全是松树，我这边是苹果园。我的苹果树永远也不会踱过去吃掉他松树下的松球，我对他说。他只是说：“好篱笆造出好邻家。”,Personification: refer to the speaker himself,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,春天在我心里作祟，我在悬想能不能把一个念头注入他的脑里：“为什么好篱笆造出好邻家？是否指着,Where
14、there are cows? But here there are no cows.Before I built a wall Id ask to knowWhat I was walling in or walling out,And to whom I was like to give offence.,有牛的人家？可是我们此地又没有牛。我在造墙之前先要弄个清楚，圈进来的是什么，圈出去的是什么，并且我可能开罪的是些什么人家，,Speakers meditation on wall,Protect dignity and property, hinder the communication
15、,Something there is that doesnt love a wall,That wants it down.“I could say “Elves“ to him,But its not elves exactly, and Id ratherHe said it for himself.,有一点什么，它不喜欢墙，它要推倒它。”我可以对他说这是“鬼”。但严格说也不是鬼我想这事还是由他自己决定吧。,I see him thereBringing a stone grasped firmly by the topIn each hand, like an old-stone sa
16、vage armed.He moves in darkness as it seems to me,Not of woods only and the shade of trees.,我看见他在那里搬一块石头，两手紧抓着石头的上端，像一个旧石器时代的武装的野蛮人。我觉得他是在黑暗中摸索，这黑暗不仅是来自深林与树荫。,simile,Backward, uncivilized, convention,He will not go behind his fathers saying,And he likes having thought of it so wellHe says again,“Goo
17、d fences make good neighbors.,他不肯探究他父亲传给他的格言他想到这句格言，便如此的喜欢，于是再说一遍，“好篱笆造出好邻家”。,Form,Blank verse is the baseline meter 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 e
18、xtensively to sustain the natural speech-like quality of the verse. There are no stanza breaks, obvious end-rhymes, 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).,Intern
19、al rhymes, too, are subtle, slanted, and conceivably coincidental. The vocabulary is all of a pieceno fancy words, all short (only one word, another, is of three syllables), all conversationaland this is perhaps why the words resonate so consummately with each other in sound and feel.,The wall is a
20、key in this poem, it unites the speaker and his neighbor every year and separates them as well.Actually, the wall symbolizes the regulations made upon human being in modern society. Living in the modern society, one is bound by many rules and laws to enforce the normal social order.,What does the wa
21、ll symbolize?,Themes,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 habit. Yet the very earth conspires against them and makes their task Sisyphean. Sisyphus is the fi
22、gure 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 inevitably, whether at the hand of hunters or sprites, or the frost and thaw of natures invisible hand, the boulders tumbl
23、e 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), the doomed nature of this enterprise and our persistence in this activity regardless.,Analysis,As the narrator points
24、 out, the very act of mending the wall seems to be in opposition to nature. Every year, stones are dislodged and gaps suddenly appear, all without explanation. Every year, the two neighbors fill the gaps and replace the fallen boulders, only to have parts of the wall fall over again in the coming mo
25、nths. It seems as if nature is attempting to destroy the barriers that man has created on the land, even as man continues to repair the barriers, simply out of habit and tradition.,The speaker may scorn his neighbors obstinate（顽固的） wall-building, may observe the activity with humorous detachment, bu
26、t 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, then, is the real wall-builder? The speaker says he sees no need for a wall here, but this implies
27、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 would he initiate it here? There is something in him that does love a wall, or at least the act of makin
28、g a wall.,Perhaps his skeptical questions and quips can then be read as an attempt to justify his own behavior to himself. While he chooses to present himself as a modern man, far beyond old-fashioned traditions, the narrator is really no different from his neighbor: he too clings to the concept of
29、property and division, of ownership and individuality. Ultimately, the presence of the wall between the properties does ensure a quality relationship between the two neighbors. By maintaining the division between the properties, the narrator and his neighbor are able to maintain their individuality
30、and personal identity as farmers: one of apple trees, and one of pine trees.,Moreover, the annual act of mending the wall also provides an opportunity for the two men to interact and communicate with each other, an event that might not otherwise occur in an isolated rural environment. The act of mee
31、ting to repair the wall allows the two men to develop their relationship and the overall community far more than if each maintained their isolation on separate properties.,分析,不喜欢墙的“Something” 及“it” 多半指一种代表自然的力量，诗中irony可由两个邻居相约一同建立使两人分离的墙处看出。 本诗的措辞极为平易，意象语亦多采自然的景物，两者与诗的题材和人物的配合都非常稳当。在“T”与“my neighbor”的意见的对峙中，诗人使“hunters,” “dogs,” “rabbits,”及“Sun”等配合“Something”（意指自然，已见前述），而以“an old-stone savage armed”及“moves in darkness”等字眼描写neighbor这是成功的对比手法的运用。 诗中的wall除了字面上的墙以外，当然更象征着各种人为的籓篱。有用的墙可以达到保护或隔离的目的，而无用的墙却无疑的是有形的交通和人与人的情谊的阻碍。,Thank you for your attention! Group Five,The End,
