In actuality, Silas is returning to the farm to die. After a long period of absence, Silas returns to the farm and asks Mary and Warren to let him work for them again. Silas is an unreliable farmhand who has worked for Mary and Warren several times in the past. At Mary's urging, Warren eventually agrees to let Silas stay on the farm. When Silas returns to the farm, Warren does not feel that he has any obligation to the former farmhand because Silas did not uphold his end of the bargain. He gave Silas several chances to prove himself as a farmhand, but each time was disappointed by Silas' unreliability. Warren, Mary's husband, is presented as more rational and realistic than Mary. Although she understands that Silas did not fulfill his obligation to the farm, Mary still wants to help him and suspects that he returned to the farm to die. She believes that people should help those in need, whether they deserve it or not. Mary, Warren's wife, is presented in a more compassionate light than Warren in terms of her treatment of Silas. Whenever the narrator asks him to justify his habit, the neighbor says only: "Good fences make good neighbors." Over the course of the poem, it becomes clear that the neighbor is not an unreasonable traditionalist, but is actually wise in his repeated adage and is an inspiration to the narrator. The Neighbor ("Mending Wall")Īt first, the neighbor is presented as a throw-back to earlier times, clinging to the old-fashioned habit of maintaining the property line simply for the sake of tradition. For example, in "The Road Not Taken," the first three stanzas can be seen as directly linked to Frost's own voice, but the final stanza (in which Frost ironically mocks the narrator's sudden nostalgia for the past) has Frost swiftly pulling out of the poem's character in order to highlight his hypocrisy to the reader. The common themes of depression, isolation, and melancholy, relating directly to Frost's personal struggles with depression and loneliness, also reveal Frost as the primary inspiration for the "narrator."Īt times, however, Frost clearly detaches himself from the character of the "narrator" as a way to provide ironic commentary on the overall meaning of the poem. Many of the poems have autobiographical elements (for example: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Acquainted with the Night," "Mending Wall," and "The Lockless Door"), which automatically create a sense of Frost's personality. Although the narrator in each of these poems is not necessarily the same, there are always aspects that relate to Frost's own voice. The majority of Frost's poems are written in the first-person form with a common narrator.
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