- Title
- Of fences and peace between neighbours
- Creator
- Krüger, Rósaan
- Date Issued
- 2009
- Date
- 2009
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68909
- Identifier
- vital:29338
- Identifier
- https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC85309
- Description
- Publisher version
- Description
- The speaker in the poem "Mending Wall" by American poet Robert Frost questions the wisdom of the saying that "Good Fences Make Good Neighbo[u]rs" (1914 North of Boston lines 27 and 45). The walls or fences referred to in the poem represent more than just physical barriers separating adjacent premises; the speaker sees them as representing obstacles to communication and friendship between individuals. Seen from the perspective of the speaker, a fence or wall is a "bad" thing. But the speaker is but one of the parties to the neighbourly relationship. For the speaker's neighbour, a wall or a fence is "a protector of privacy" (Watson "Frost's Wall : The View from the Other Side" 1971 44 The New England Quarterly 653 655). Thus there are two views on walls or fences: they can be seen negatively as obstructing good relations, or positively as dividers that secure good relations between neighbours by separating them and protecting their privacy rights.
- Format
- 10 pages
- Format
- Publisher
- Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Obiter
- Relation
- Krüger, R. (2009) Of fences and peace between neighbours. Obiter, 30 (2) 360-369. https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC85309
- Relation
- Obiter volume 30 number 2 360 369 2009 1682-5853
- Rights
- Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the publisher Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
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