True Beliefs

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a wall between him and his neighbor, the speaker believes that fences, or walls in this case, will create barriers between friendships and also allows for unneeded separation between people. Despite this belief that a wall is unnecessary, he still comes out every year and helps his neighbor mend the wall. The speaker would like to ask his neighbor the question why fences make good neighbors but the speaker wants to hear his neighbor say it himself. The speaker also says if he was building a wall he would like to know what he was walling in or out and to what or whom he needed to take offense to. This is where the speaker is trying to rationalize what purposes a wall would need to be built.
The second character in the poem is the speaker’s neighbor, who is more down to earth. He is a decent person but seems to lack the intelligence of the speaker to accept any outside opinions. To prove this point, the neighbor repeats himself over and over by saying, “Good fences make ...

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accepts things as they are told to him and not as they actually are.
The reader may think that the wall between the two neighbors represents more than just a dividing point. It could represent a difference in beliefs between both of the characters. For instance, the speaker is willing to ask why the wall is needed while the neighbor believes what his father has always told him without questioning or asking why a fence makes good neighbors. Also the speaker is able to see many perspectives or opinions on having or not having a wall. For example, he says, “Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it/ Where there are cows? But here there are no cows” (“Mending ...

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