MENDING WALL

This poem is the first work in Frost's second book of poetry, North of Boston, which was published
upon his return from England in 1915. While living in England with his family, Frost was exceptionally
homesick for the farm in New Hampshire where he had lived with his wife from 1900 to 1909. Despite
the eventual failure of the farm, Frost associated his time in New Hampshire with a peaceful, rural
sensibility that he instilled in the majority of his subsequent poems. Mending Wall is autobiographical
on an even more specific level: a French-Canadian named Napoleon Guay had been Frosts neighbour in
New Hampshire and the two had often walked along their property line and repaired the wall that
separated their land. Ironically, the most famous line of the poem (Good fences make good
neighbours) was not invented by Frost himself, but was rather a phrase that Guay frequently declared
to Frost during their walks. This particular adage was a popular colonial proverb in the middle of the
17th century, but variations of it also appeared in Norway (There must be a fence between good
neighbours), Germany (Between neighbours gardens a fence is good), Japan (Build a fence even
between intimate friends), and even India (Love your neighbour, but do not throw down the dividing
wall).
In terms of form, Mending Wall is not structured with stanzas; it is a simple forty-five lines of firstperson narrative. Frost does maintain iambic stresses, but he is flexible with the form in order to
maintain the conversational feel of the poem. He also shies away from any obvious rhyme patterns and
instead relies upon the occasional internal rhyme and the use of assonance in certain ending terms (such
as wall, hill, balls, well).
In the poem itself, Frost creates two distinct characters that have different ideas about what exactly
makes a person a good neighbour. The narrator deplores his neighbours preoccupation with repairing
the wall; he views it as old-fashioned and even archaic. After all, he quips, his apples are not going to
invade the property of his neighbours pinecones. Moreover, within a land of such of such freedom and
discovery, the narrator asks, are such borders necessary to maintain relationships between people?
Despite the narrators sceptical view of the wall, the neighbour maintains his seemingly old-fashioned
mentality, responding to each of the narrators disgruntled questions and rationalizations with nothing
more than the adage: Good fences make good neighbours.
As the narrator points out, the very act of mending the wall seems to be in opposition to nature. Every
year, stones are dislodged and gaps suddenly appear, all without explanation. Every year, the two
neighbours fill the gaps and replace the fallen boulders, only to have parts of the wall fall over again in
the coming months. It seems as if nature is attempting to destroy the barriers that man has created on
the land, even as man continues to repair the barriers, simply out of habit and tradition.
Ironically, while the narrator seems to begrudge the annual repairing of the wall, Frost subtly points out
that the narrator is actually more active than the neighbour. It is the narrator who selects the day for
mending and informs his neighbour across the property. Moreover, the narrator himself walks along the
wall at other points during the year in order to repair the damage that has been done by local hunters.
Despite his sceptical attitude, it seems that the narrator is even more tied to the tradition of wallmending than his neighbour. Perhaps his sceptical questions and quips can then be read as an attempt
to justify his own behaviour to himself. While he chooses to present himself as a modern man, far
beyond old-fashioned traditions, the narrator is really no different from his neighbour: he too clings to
the concept of property and division, of ownership and individuality.
Ultimately, the presence of the wall between the properties does ensure a quality relationship between
the two neighbours. By maintaining the division between the properties, the narrator and his neighbour
are able to maintain their individuality and personal identity as farmers: one of apple trees, and one of
pine trees. Moreover, the annual act of mending the wall also provides an opportunity for the two men to
interact and communicate with each other, an event that might not otherwise occur in an isolated rural
environment. The act of meeting to repair the wall allows the two men to develop their relationship and
the overall community far more than if each maintained their isolation on separate properties.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Dulce et Decorum Est, hailed as the best poem of World War 1, is a skillfully crafted text which has been loved by all for its
realistically gritty and gruesome representation of World War 1 and for its ironic quip at those who preach war as glorious.
The first stanza is populated by hunchbacked beggars (line 1), coughing hags (line 2) and soldiers who are more like zombies
than men as they lamely march asleep, blind and drunk with fatigue(lines 5, 6, 7). It is this trifold simile, quickly dropped onto
the reader with the juxtaposition of a fluid iambic pentameter, that inaugurates the representation of war as three things: identity
stripping, individualism forbidding and both body and mind haunting.
Alongside this ghoulish imagery, another juxtaposition is created. This time of the alliteration of contrastingly hard Ks and Ts in
the lines 2, 7 and 8, and vague, thumping Ms in line 5. The former bring to mind the cracking of gunshots and the latter conjure
up images of missiles hitting the ground. As a result, the apprehension already created in the poem is exacerbated. The
resulting tension, combined with the atmospheric imagery, creates a scene that represents war as nothing less than devilish.
The second stanza is a stark contrast to the first. On line 9, Wilfred Owen interrupts the safe iambic pentameter with the short
and harsh stabs of Gas! Gas! Quick boys!. Not a moment later does the calm become action and the slumbering march an
ecstasy of fumbling (line 9) as the soldiers try to fit their gas mask. Due to the introduction of gas, the reader realises that this
poem is set in World War 1 and with this realisation comes a question: Wasnt World War 1 normally poetically characterised by
patriotism and the honour seeking of young soldiers?
However this hint of irony is quickly snatched from the reader as they are told of a soldier who wasn't able to fit his mask quickly
enough. A soldier never given a name, just described as yelling, stumbling, guttering, choking and finally, drowning.
With their depiction of the soldiers as hags, beggars and walking dead, and the replaying of the soldier death in in the
speakers dreams, it is these two stanzas that really expresses the representation of war that Owen was trying to impress upon
the readers mind: soldiers either die in a nightmare, or live with their bodies forever haunted, and their minds forever taunted.
The final stanza extends the imagery of the dying man with alliteration, sibilance, linking rhyme and even a reference to satan
himself. The second important part to this stanza is the shift in setting and purpose; the poem now becomes a challenging
question posed to the reader. At first, it seems as though the soldier is still speaking. However, the reader soon realizes that
speaker is now Wilfred Owen himself.
With the words My Friend on line 25, Owen is actually making a direct reference to a poet named Jessie Pope, who with
her famous poem Whos For The Game, ignorantly compared war to a sporting match. It is her whom Owen reproaches
when he, after declaring it a Lie, quotes the famous Latin words of Homer, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Ending the
poem the poem in such a way has a great affect; the irony sinks in, and so does the final facet of Owens representation of
World War 1: a rebuke to all poets who hail war merry.

LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER

Dahl commences with a picture of static cosiness in a middle-class, domestic

setting. Mary Maloney, six months pregnant, waits for her policeman husband
Patrick Maloney to come home from work. The scene emphasizes domesticity:
the room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn. Matching chairs, lamps,
glasses, and whisky, soda, and ice cubes await. Mary watches the clock, smiling
quietly to herself as each minute brings her husband closer to home. When he
arrives, she takes his coat and hangs it in the closet. The couple sits and drinks
in silenceMary comfortable with the knowledge that Patrick does not like to talk
much until after the first drink. So by deliberate design, everything seems normal
until Mary notices that Patrick drains most of his drink in a single swallow, and
then pours himself another, very strong drink. Mary offers to fix dinner and serve
it to him so that he does not have to leave his chair, although they usually dine
out on Thursdays. She also offers to prepare a snack. Patrick declines all her
offers of food. The reader becomes aware of a tension which escapes Marys full
notice.
Patrick confronts Mary and makes a speech, only the upshot of which is given
explicitly: so there it is. . . . And I know its a kind of bad time to be telling you,
but there simply wasnt any other way. Of course, Ill give you money and see
youre looked after. But there neednt really be any fuss. For reasons which Dahl
does not make explicit, Patrick has decided to leave his pregnant wife.Mary goes
into shock. At first she wonders if she imagined the whole thing. She moves
automatically to retrieve something from the basement freezer and prepare
supper. She returns with a frozen leg of lamb to find Patrick standing by a
window with his back to her. Hearing her come in, he tells her not to make
supper for him, that he is going out. With no narrative notice of any emotional
transformation, Mary walks up to him and brings the frozen joint of meat down
as hard as she could on his head. Patrick falls dead.

She emerges from her shock to feel panic. Do the courts sentence pregnant
women to death? Do they execute both mother and child? Do they wait until the
tenth month? Not wanting to take a chance on her childs life, she immediately
begins setting up an alibi. She puts the lamb in the oven to cook, washes her
hands, and tidies her hair and makeup. She hurries to her usual grocery store,
telling the grocer, Sam, that she needed potatoes and peas because Patrick did
not want to eat out and she was caught . . . without any vegetables in the
house. In a moment of truly black comedy, the grocer asks about dessert: How
about afterwards? What are you going to give him for afterwards? and she
agrees to a slice of cheesecake. On her way home, she mentally prepares herself
to be shocked by anything tragic or terrible she might find.
When she sees her husbands corpse again, she remembers how much she once
loved him, and her tears of loss are genuine. She is sincerely distraught when
she calls the local police stationthe one where Patrick has workedto report
what she has found. Mary knows the policemen who report to the crime scene,
and she casts Sergeant Jack Noonan in the role of her comforter. A doctor, police
photographer, fingerprint expert, and two detectives join the investigation, while
Noonan periodically checks on Mary. She tells her story again, from the
beginning: Patrick came home, was too tired to go out for supper, so she left him
relaxing at home while she started the lamb cooking and then ran out for
vegetables. One detective checks with the grocer, who confirms Marys account.
No one seems to seriously consider her a suspect. The focus of the investigation
in on finding the murder weapon which must be a large, heavy blunt
instrument. The detectives ask Mary about tools, and she professes ignorance
but says that there may be some out in the garage. She remains in a chair while
the house is searched.
Noonan tries to persuade Mary to stay somewhere else for the night, but she
refuses. She asks him to bring her a drink and suggests that he have one too.
Eventually all of the police investigators are standing around, sipping drinks,
tired from their fruitless search. Noonan notices that the oven is still on and the
lamb has finished cooking. Mary thanks him for turning the oven off and then
asks her dead husbands gathered colleaguesknowing that they have worked
long past their own mealtimesto eat the dinner she had fixed for Patrick. She
could not eat a thing, she tells them, but Patrick would want her to offer them
decent hospitality, especially as they are the men who will catch her
husbands killer.The final scene of the story concerns the policemen eating in the
kitchen and discussing the case while Mary listens from the living room. The men
agree that the killer probably discarded the massive murder weapon almost
immediately, and predict that they will find it on the premises. Another theorizes
that the weapon is probably right under our very noses.
Themes
Betrayal:Lamb to the Slaughter tells of at least one betrayal: Patrick Maloneys
unexplained decision to leave his pregnant wife. This violation of the marriagevow is obviously not the only betrayal in the story, however. Marys killing of her

husband is perhaps the ultimate betrayal. Her elaborately planned alibi and
convincing lies to the detectives also constitute betrayal.
Identity:Dahl plays with the notion of identity both at the level of popular
psychology and at a somewhat more philosophical, or perhaps anthropological,
level. At the level of popular psychology, Dahl makes it clear through his
description of the Maloney household that Mary has internalized the bourgeois,
or middle class, ideal of a young mid-twentieth century housewife, maintaining a
tidy home and catering to her husband; pouring drinks when the man finishes his
day is a gesture that comes from movies and magazines of the day. Marys
sudden murderous action shatters the image that we have of her and that she
seems to have of herself. Dahl demonstrates, in the deadly fall of the frozen
joint, that identity can be fragile. (Once she shatters her own identity, Mary
must carefully reconstruct it for protective purposes, as when she sets up an alibi
by feigning a normal conversation with the grocer.) In the anthropological sense,
Dahl appears to suggest that, in essence, human beings are fundamentally nasty
and brutish creatures capable of precipitate and bloody acts. Then there are the
police detectives, who pride themselves on their ability to solve a crime, but
whom Mary sweetly tricks into consuming the main exhibit. Their identity, or at
least their competency, is thrown into doubt.
Love and Passion:At the beginning of Lamb to the Slaughter, Mary Maloney
feels love and physical passion for her husband Patrick. She luxuriates in his
presence, in the warm male glow that came out of him to her, and adores the
way he sits, walks, and behaves. Even far along into her pregnancy, she hurries
to greet him, and waits on him hand and footmuch more attentively, it appears
from his reactions, than he would like. Patrick is presumably motivated to leave
his wife by an overriding passion for something or someone else. Marys mention
of his failure to advance at work, and his own wish that she not make a fuss
about their separation because It wouldnt be very good for my job indicate
that it may be professional success that he desires. His treatment of his wife
does not suggest that he loves her.
Passivity:The concept of passivity figures in the story. The first pages of the story
portray Marys existence as almost mindlessly passive: she sits and watches the
clock, thinking that each minute brings her husband closer to her. She is content
to watch him closely and try to anticipate his moods and needs. Patricks
predictability up to this point is part of this passivity. The two are living a
clockwork life against which, in some way, each ultimately rebels. Passivity
appears as the repression of passion, and passion finds a way to reassert itself.
Justice and Injustice:The question of justice and injustice is directly related to the
question of revenge. Lamb to the Slaughter narrates a train of injustices,
beginning with Patricks betrayal of Mary and their marriage, peaking with Marys
killing of Patrick, and finding its denouement in Marys deception of the
investigating officers. Patrick acts unjustly (or so it must be assumed on the basis
of the evidence) in announcing his abandonment of Mary, for this breaks the
wedding oath; Mary acts unjustly, in a way far exceeding her husbands injustice,

in killing Patrick, and she compounds the injustice by concealing it from the
authorities.
Commentary
Lamb to The Slaughter may be an easy read to understand its literal meaning,
but one needs to go little further than this to derive the true meaning the story
has to convey. In order to understand their meanings that lie concealed in the
titles depth, the reader should be sensitive to scan the crux of the story.
Otherwise, one may get easily misled.The theme of deception is in fact
introduced in the title itself. Lamb to The Slaughter is not to be understood as
the usual gentle lamb which is taken to the slaughter house, but as the lamb
with immense potential to slaughter its butcher.
The protagonist of the story, Mrs. Maloney is an ideal wife who loves her husband
from the core of her heart and counts every single second of his presence to be
precious. She is no doubt a lady with lamb-like character with gentleness,
docility, devotion and homeliness, but she is also the most jovial person as long
as she is with Patrick, her husband. She is also projected as a person who can do
anything for her husbands sake.
Contrarily, as deception unfolds its menace she is naturally forced to drive to the
other side of her human nature. She is extraordinarily alerted when she realizes
that her true love for him is taken too far to be treated as of no value. Gradually
her passion of anger, frustration and disappointment blindfold her to commit the
most deadly scene that she could never imagine otherwise. The dreadful action
takes place within a flicker of time.It is the total deception of Patrick that leads to
this gruesome act in the house that had no forebodings in the past. It is this
inhuman character of her dear husband that shakes her faith and totally blinds
her to wildly avenge for his deed. Understanding the magnitude of the matter,
most women in her situation would go into that degree of frenzy.
The theme of deception takes its double fold, when Maloney embarks on
revenge. She not only shocks her husband to death but the readers too, when
she turns out to be like a tigress with her strategic forays.Once she realizes that
she is into an affair there is no going back for her. So she wittily plans to deceive
everybody involved in the matter. There is no exception for the detectives. Why
should she trust others when she knows her most trusted person failed to hold
accountability. In that regard she even succeeds in making the detectives eat
away the whole meat club which is the testimony of her crime that would have
darkened the rest of her life.At the end, Mrs. Maloney becomes a good deceiver
as she successfully deceives many besides her husband who deceived her at
first, hence the title, Lamb to the Slaughter.
Justification of the Title:The story Lamb to the Slaughter is a story that presents
human characters with all its vices and virtues, with all its positive and negative
qualities blended together. The story begins with Mary Maloney, six months
pregnant and a very affectionate and devoted wife eagerly waiting for her
policeman husband Patrick Maloney. She is an exemplary housewife maintaining

her house neat and clean and willingly doing everything for the comfort and
happiness of her husband. Every day she eagerly waits for the return of her
husband. Thus we can comfortably say that she symbolises a lamb an innocent
and gentle creature. But when she realizes that everything was over from her
husbands side and that he has decided to leave her and break their marriage
she immediately decides, out of extreme frustration and anger to slaughter her
husband. After killing her husband she does not feel sad, nor does she regret her
action. Rather she cleverly makes a perfect alibi to save herself from all the
consequences of her crime and she becomes successful too. Thus the title of the
story is very appropriate and suitable.From other point of view too, the title
appears to be very suitable. Patrick Maloney, the husband, too can be considered
to be a lamb. As people often kill a lamb without any fuss or warning so he has
been slaughtered by his wife without any warning or fuss. Therefore the title,
once again, seems to be appropriate. However we should not forget that keeping
his monstrous actions in mind his decision to leave his wife when she is so
caring and loving and at the time when she is six months pregnant it is difficult
to associate him with such an innocent creature as lamb. Thus his association
with lamb could be valid only for his slaughter like a lamb. And lastly we should
not forget that a lamb (leg) has been used in this story as the tool, as the
weapon for the murder and hence from this point of view too, the title of the
story is very much appropriate.