In "Mending Wall," Robert Frost's narrator's tone is playful and ironic, repeating the line "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" as counter to his neighbor's repeated "'Good fences make good neighbors'" mantra. While the narrator speculates on forces beyond the neighbors' control that work at dismantling what they rebuild, his neighbor, more than he, appears to robotically labor to heap stones back on their property line. Changing weather, hunters, even a hint at unknown forces ("The gaps I mean,/No one has seen them made or heard them made") obliterate what they will dutifully repair each spring. This futile ritual seems to amuse the speaker while his grimmer neighbor says nothing but that one line, his father's saying, dutifully repeated like the wall repair. Considering the futility of rebuilding, the narrator also contemplates subverting his neighbor's borrowed phrase but knows "He will not go behind his father's saying."
It's strangely ironic, to me, that the most recognizable quote from the poem seems to be the neighbor's, "Good fences make good neighbors," rather than the narrator's "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." It is doubly ironic, or perhaps fitting, that the popular mindset latches on to what's represented as hackneyed as conveying a powerful truth, allied to the concept of private property, while missing the entire undercurrent of a poem: contemplation on unknown or unseen forces that constantly whittle away at our grasp on the material. How fitting that these same contemporary attitudes play out when applied to a broader notion as to how the dividers we build between or within nation(s) reflect divisions between or within human consciousnesses. Imagine also how, over the span of a lifetime or an epoch, these walls we erect and try to maintain end up being monuments to the more futile part of human nature. Desires to capture, own, or limit interaction. Just a few thoughts about these dividers...
Doubtless the U.S.-Mexico Border Fence will not threaten
The Great Wall of China as an international tourist attraction nor rival the Great Wall in inspiring awe. Still, like the border fence, the Wall (or Walls) got built and maintained at great cost over many centuries, and in some ways their intended functions share similarities. Perhaps their fates will as well.
In one part of the Great Wall's history,
Qin Shi Huang conquered all opposing states and unified China in 221 BC, establishing the Qin Dynasty. Intending to impose centralized rule and prevent the resurgence of feudal lords, he ordered the destruction of the wall sections that divided his empire along the former state borders. To protect the empire against intrusions by the Xiongnu people from the north, he ordered the building of a new wall to connect the remaining fortifications along the empire's new northern frontier.
While its financial cost was not calculated, estimates of the human cost in building it suggest great expense:
Transporting the large quantity of materials required for construction was difficult, so builders always tried to use local resources. Stones from the mountains were used over mountain ranges, while rammed earth was used for construction in the plains. There are no surviving historical records indicating the exact length and course of the Qin Dynasty walls. Most of the ancient walls have eroded away over the centuries, and very few sections remain today. The human cost of the construction is unknown, but it has been estimated by some authors that hundreds of thousands, if not up to a million, workers died building the Qin wall
.
In terms of its (or their) original intent, what can one now say of the Great Wall of China except that it is a cultural relic or artifact, an amazing one, yes, but as to its function over time in relation to the motives that led to its creation, it reflects human suffering, waste, power struggles, and wealth concentration. Yes, one can imagine that those engaged in the struggles invested them with ancestral, even religious/spiritual, dimensions, as nations do today. How noble do we consider these dimensions when applied to modern power struggles? Often, not very.
Our own
"Great U.S. Border Wall" also comes with a high pricetag:
A plan for 700 more miles of fencing along the southwest U.S. border — part of a immigration-bill deal forged in the Senate this week — would come with a mammoth and unpredictable price tag, judging by past efforts.
The original legislation crafted by the bipartisan Gang of Eight set aside $1.5 billion for fencing — and that was before a deal was struck with Republican senators to add more to the massive border security and fencing proposal. So how much would a new bigger border fence cost?
Customs and Border Protection spent $2.4 billion between 2006 and 2009 to complete 670 miles of border fence, and the vast majority of that was single-layer — one line of fencing designed to keep either pedestrians or vehicles from crossing into the United States, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
These observations do not begin to account for the wall's, or fence's, impact on the ecology of the adjoining regions. Wildlife does not adhere to human political ideology but has historically been affected immensely by humanity's consistently futile attempts to "rule the world." In the end, this newer incarnation of a "great wall" has its greatest impact on the human heart and spirit, to me anyway.
Walls/fences mostly isolate us from each other and from our own spirits, or connectedness.
To recall Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," or at least the slant I took toward it, I think Americans are, like the staid neighbor, increasingly unwilling or unable to "get behind" the purpose of our actions, as well as their consequences. If anything, we are increasing the rate at which we build our walls, or fences, or "gates" against each other, or "the other," if you wish.
Our gated world reflects our walled-in mentality.
Behind these walls suspicion and discontent grow and fester. Those hiding behind the walls seem to hate or distrust humanity generally but project their antagonism mostly at those whom they would deem "other," apart from whatever limited group with which they identify.
But like the Great Wall and the wall being mended in the poem, there is "something" that doesn't love these walls. It is intangible, often unseen, underestimated in its power, operating patiently, over long periods of time. It gets called by different names by different people and while it is virtually unknown or completely undervalued as an adversary by the gleeful builders of walls, it is part of what eventually overcomes those walls, a force that connects and unites rather than divides, stronger than the forces erecting and maintaining those walls. Some call it spirit, faith, unity, or the better nature of humanity, or just nature. Some call it hope. Some, just love. Wall-builders underestimate that force's strength at their own peril. Peace.
10:48 AM PT: Thank you Community Spotlight & Rescue Rangers.