Mending Wall, The Black Cottage, The Mountain, The Wood-pile
St. Bernard de Clairvaux, a 12th century Cistercian monk who retreated to a life of solitude before becoming one of the most influential churchmen of his time, said that “you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters." Written with a similar mindset to depict the lifestyle and culture of 20th century New England, Robert Frost’s North of Boston collection analyzes the daily routines and interactions of individuals he witnessed while growing up. A place of rapid industrialization that simultaneously held a population tied to their agricultural roots, New England was a region that needed to find balance in a changing world. Frost attempts to find this equilibrium in his poems, expanding beyond a specific region of the United States to general lessons that the human community can retain about technology, time spent with nature, and learning to take a step back at times. With the experience of the lonely craft of a textile worker and the outdoor work of a farmer as a part of his adolescence and adulthood, Frost brought a voice to the significant portion of Americans searching for both wealth and open air simplicity. Robert Frost juxtaposes the day-to-day actions of those who hold outdoor professions with symbolic elements of the natural world to reveal that a person's economic and social goals should be modeled on nature’s guidelines. Humanity’s progressive movement towards industrialism and development leads to inevitable division, which can be limited by following nature's example of harmony and cohesion.
The human made barrier in “Mending Wall” acts as a symbol of division that some think is necessary for social prosperity, whereas the distinct environment offered in “The Black Cottage” works as a solution to healing discordant societal norms, suggesting that development should be approached through cooperation and harmony in the same way nature operates. In “Mending Wall,” a barrier between two neighbors who have occupations as farmers is described as being composed of rocks that need “a spell to make them balance” (Frost 2). However, nature follows its imperfect course each year and makes the rocks fall down, forcing the narrator’s neighbor to uphold a tradition of repetitive division to keep the wall up. As opposed to acknowledging that the “apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines” (2), and being open to the fact that cooperation among farmers could lead to joint social well-being, the neighbor in “Mending Wall” stresses the importance of a barrier because it is the way that past humans have attempted to reach individual success. He uses his father’s adage of “[g]ood fences make good neighbours” (2) to support his argument, since his view as to how social prosperity can be achieved is through individual exertion instead of shared profit. The narrator, on the other hand, acknowledges the harmonious aspect of nature and tries “to put a notion in his head… [that] [s]omething there is that doesn’t love wall,” (2) pointing at the wall’s gradual destruction as evidence that a more beneficial course is one that follows cohesion and collaboration. While “Mending Wall” embodies the unnatural way to work towards prosperity through division, the isolated residence in “The Black Cottage” works in the opposite way, offering a solution to factious social norms. The narrators in the poem recall the life of the owner, a woman who rejected the degrading racist norms of her time and created an environment that worked in synchrony with nature. Even after having been abandoned for many years, the cottage remains “in a sort of special picture / Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees, / Set well back from the road in the rank lodged grass” (23). Juxtaposing the woman’s abode with the way that the elite community of the South had organized its social hierarchy at the time, where different races were “made so very unlike” (24), reveals two different methods of achieving success in a social context. While the latter encourages human degradation, the former preaches inclusiveness. Specifically, the cottage acts as a symbol for the rejection of societal norms that base themselves on divisive feelings, and the narrator describes how the woman’s “innocence [got] its own way” (24) since she could not understand why certain members of her community were experiencing different treatment. That being said, however, the economic and political prospect of the Civil War shatters the harmonious life that the woman had constructed with her family. A war that was fought due to differing opinions regarding how to treat a group of humans based on race, the destruction of cohesion that it created in the United States left nothing that could “stir / Anything in her after all the years… Nothing could draw her after [she lost her] two sons” (23). Despite the loss she feels on a personal level, she is ultimately “the force that would at last prevail” (24) because she created an environment that modeled nature’s way of reaching out to those who are alienated. “The Black Cottage” acts as an alternative solution to the division proposed by the barrier in “Mending Wall,” providing a more natural way to reach one’s community-based goals.
While “The Mountain” serves as a natural symbol that the human community attempts to subjugate for political goals, the juxtaposition of the bird to the narrator in “The Wood-pile” emphasizes the importance of inspiration instead of domination over nature, revealing that humans must model their civil institutions and professions on the natural world. In “The Mountain”, the narrator is looking for a particular town that constantly feels the “shadowy presence” of the huge summit, only to meet a man who comes from a different area. The man explains that his hometown is made up of “scattered farms. [There] were but sixty voters last election. [They] can’t in nature grow to many more: / That thing takes all the room” (9). Describing the mountain as more of a hindrance than anything else, the man makes it clear that its omnipresence has prevented the farms, and similar provinces, from continuing their growth and creating more political organizations. In reality, however, the farms exist because of the precipice. Later in the conversation, the man explains that the mountain “is the township, and the township’s [the mountain]— And a few houses [are] sprinkled round the foot, Like boulders broken off the upper cliff” (11). The simile which connects the abodes to boulders that come directly from a part of the natural world reveals the former’s dependence nature, and that despite the inconvenience the the mountain may pose for political expansion, it is what allowed the towns to exist in the first place. The narrator, like many others who had the same desire before him, wants to find “a path… to reach the top” (10) and see the wonders that it holds at its summit, not satisfied with living in its shadow. Even when the man he is talking to makes the point that “[i]t doesn’t seem so much to climb a mountain / You’ve worked around the foot of all your life,” (11) the narrator responds by saying that he does not want to reach the top “for the sake of climbing” (11). Humanity’s tendency to dominate, instead of being content with the shelter or reciprocity offered by an element of nature, is explored in “The Wood-pile” as well, but through a lens that offers a solution. The poem’s speaker, during his walk through a frozen swamp, sees himself in the nature around him with the presence of a bird. The vulnerable animal “was careful to put a tree between [them] as he lighted, And say no word to [reveal] who he was” (65), showing both how there is a barrier between the two and that they are afraid that the other will see too far into a part of their identity. The bird fears that the narrator is “after him for a feather— / The white one in his tail,” (65) so they initially separate from one another to conceal the unique aspects of their individuality. Instead of being representative of the natural world, the bird embodies the narrator and his preliminary fear when entering the swamp, which is changed with the presence of the wood-pile. A physical manifestation of the harmony between human and nature, the pile of wood was “cut and split / And piled— and measured, four by four by eight… [the] handiwork on which / He spent himself, the labour of his axe” (65). The narrator sees a beautiful aspect to the wood, describing every bit of detail about its essence, and admires it in wonder. The wood-pile radiates harmony in a way that even makes the bird go “behind it to make his last stand” (65). The effect that the pile has on the narrator, prompting a transition from fear to wonder and inspiration, is paralleled in a similar way with the elements of nature that encompass it. The narrator notices that “Clematis / [h]ad wound strings round and round it like a bundle. What held it though on one side was a tree… [The wood] warm[ed] the frozen swamp as best it could” (65). Exemplifying a human’s outdoor profession that works in cohesion with nature to create a beautiful result in the narrator’s view, the wood-pile offers an alternative to constantly looking for domination over nature: inspiration. Rather than looking to conquer the natural world, like the narrator hopes to do in “The Mountain”, recognizing the potential for harmony like the traveler does in “The Wood-pile” creates forward movement that is not based on destruction and greed.
Frost’s four poems juxtapose the actions of those who hold outdoor professions with symbolic elements of the natural world to reveal how a community can model their growth and prosperity on nature’s guidelines. In place of using divisive forces to reach development and political might, the human community must follow nature's example of balance and cohesion to avoid alienation and destruction. Having witnessed the movement for New England to become an industrial region of the United States while holding a significant population tied to their traditional lifestyle allowed Frost’s to capture the region’s experience in North of Boston. Anton Chekhov, a Russian short story writer of the 19th century, once illustrated how “[i]n nature a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with human beings, it is the other way around.” While some of Frost’s poems, like “Mending Wall” and “The Mountain,' reinforce the divisive side of humans, poems such as “The Black Cottage” and “The Wood-pile” offer ways that people can elevate themselves to nature’s balanced ways. Such lessons will always live through the test of time, since human civilization is a constantly evolving essence that continues to grow and search for new ways to industrialize. The key, according to Frost, is to keep nature in mind during the process.
Works Cited
Frost, Robert. North of Boston.
Cox, Sidney. “A Swinger of Birches; a Portrait of Robert Frost. With an Introduction by Robert Frost.” 1957. Digital Public Library of America, Hathi Trust Digital Library, babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015067163926;view=1up;seq=7
"Robert Frost." Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-frost.
Untermeyer, Louis. “Robert Frost: A Backward Look” 1964. Digital Public Library of America, Hathi Trust Digital Library, babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015067163926;view=1up;seq=7