The Explication An Universal Thought In his poem "Mending Wall," renown poet, Robert Frost, conveys a universal thought that an individual will continue to abide by an understood ideal based solely on what is said, not what has been personally explicated or questioned through symbolism, repetition, and irony. Throughout the poem, Frost utilizes symbolism to exemplify the theme. The wall, for example, represents the unnecessary boundaries that man has erected to enclose his "pine and ...…showed first 75 words of 550 total…

…showed last 75 words of 550 total…Frost's theme. In the voices of them both, the speaker, whimsical, thinks the neighbor is inherently prejudiced and puerile in thought, and the neighbor who replies with his one determined sentence, the inherited maxim, upholds Frost's theme that one will proceed to obey traditions, though the traditions themselves are spirits of steadfastness and restraint against change, which insist that they be respected, "thought of...so well" (l. 44), and continually rebuilt, as a matter of principle.