Good Fences Make Good Neighbors - Essay Example

Good fences make good neighbors             The neighbor is motivated by his father’s saying: “Good fences make good neighbors.” (26). The neighbor believes so much in this old adage and this is the reason that the neighbor repeats the adage twice in the novel even after the speaker makes him realize that he sees no need in having a barrier between them. The speaker even calls the neighbor an old-fashioned person as he says that, “Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top.

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.” (38-39). It is due to the neighbor’s belief in an old adage that the speaker saw his neighbor as a man from the ancient world. The neighbor believes that a healthy boundary between the two farms can make them better neighbors as he feels that the erection of good walls or barriers would prevent any of his things getting across to the speaker’s farm thus preventing any future argument, though this makes no sense to the speaker as he says that, “He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.” (23-25). The speaker asks a question that he answers himself, “Where there are cows? But here there are no cows,” (30) The speaker believes that since the two of them do not rear cows that could eat up their pines or apples, there is no need for the erection of a wall. The neighbor still insists on his saying, “Good fences make good neighbors.” (44) The neighbor believes so much in his father’s saying, while the speaker sees him as somebody with a dark-age mentality.

To him, good neighbors are the ones that have good fences between them, a good neighbor would not have any of his/her things interfering with their neighbor’s and to the neighbor, and it is only the erection of good fences that would make this possible.             The speaker would likely be responsible for the wall’s disrepair; this is not to say that the speaker is a destroyer. The speaker probably destroyed the wall as he feels that there is no need for a wall in the first place.

A justification for this argument would be seen if one takes a critical look at this quotation from the poem, “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.” (34-37). It is the speaker that does not love a wall and to say that he is the one that is responsible for the wall’s disrepair would not be out of place. If one also considers the fact that it is only the process of wall-building that really brings the neighbor and the speaker together, then the speaker would probably destroy the wall in order to initiate the wall-mending process so that the two of them can work together again.