In Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" the speaker prefers that the wall remain between his property and his neighbor's property. He seems almost transfixed by the wall. The lines that describe the wall's crumbling are lovingly said. The speaker cares about what happens to this wall. He watches it throughout the year until it is time to repair it. He notices both nature's "frozen-ground-swell under it" (2) which buckles the wall and dislodges the stones and imagines that it is the "work of hunters" (5) making some of the other gaps in the wall in order "to please the yelping dogs" (9) catch the rabbit. In the spring he contacts his neighbor in order to rebuild the fence. They work together in companionable silence, each picking up the boulders that have fallen on their side of the wall and replacing the stones. The speaker does question his neighbor as to why the wall exists. To which his neighbor responds, "Good fences make good neighbors" (27). The speaker thinks about this. He knows intellectually that there is no real reason why the wall needs to be there. He asks himself, "Where are the cows? But here there are no cows" (31). He never speaks these thoughts out loud to his neighbor. The speaker believes his neighbor "moves in darkness" (41) because he does not question the wall's being. But questioning something and wanting to actually change something are two very different things. Just because the speaker questions the wall's being, does not mean that he wants to change it. There is a quote, though I don't know who said it, "Anything that can't stand up to questioning, is of questionable standing." This wall does stand up to the speaker's questioning.
