Untitled - Skilliter

262 Deconstructive criticism
A New Critical reading of the text—What is the central tension at work in
this poem, and how is it resolved in the poem’s unified advancement of its main
theme?—is often a useful first step in deconstructing a literary work because
such readings can almost always be found to rest on a binary opposition in which
one member of the pair is privileged over the other. This binary opposition is
usually the key to the text’s ideological framework (or at least one of the text’s
ideological frameworks). Once a New Critical reading is formulated, the binary
opposition on which it rests can be deconstructed: that is, it can be examined to
find the ways in which the opposing elements in the text overlap or aren’t really
opposed. And this is how we can learn something about the limitations of the
ideology the text (consciously or unconsciously) promotes.
In the case of “Mending Wall,” it seems rather clear that the binary opposition
structuring the text can be found in the disagreement between the speaker and
his neighbor. The speaker advocates nonconformity when the tradition one has
followed no longer fits the circumstances in which one finds oneself. The neighbor,
without even thinking about what he is doing, advocates conformity to
the way things have always been done in the past. Thus the binary opposition
structuring the poem is that between nonconformity and conformity. Because
we see the situation from the speaker’s point of view and our sympathies therefore
lie with him, it is safe to say that nonconformity is the privileged term. The
main theme, from a New Critical perspective—or, in deconstructive terms, the
poem’s overt ideological project—might be stated as follows: the poem criticizes
mindless conformity to obsolete traditions for which the wall is a metaphor.
To be sure that we have identified the poem’s ideological project and not just set
up an easy target that we can then proceed to shoot down, we must find, in New
Critical fashion, all the evidence the poem offers in support of the theme we’ve
identified. For example, we accept the speaker’s negative views of his neighbor
and of obsolete traditions because he clearly shows that the wall has outlived
its purpose—“My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under
his pines” (11. 25–26)—and because the speaker associates himself with nature
(“Spring [a natural event] is the mischief in me”: 1. 28), which is generally presumed
good. Indeed, our faith in nature’s wisdom promotes our initial acceptance
of the speaker’s viewpoint in the poem’s opening four lines, which put
nature in opposition to the wall: it is nature that “sends the frozen-ground-swell”
to spill “the upper boulders in the sun” (11. 2–3).
This theme is reinforced when the men “have to use a spell” to make the unwilling
boulders, natural objects, stay in place (11. 18–19) and when it is implied
that the boulders will fall as soon as the men turn their backs (1. 19). Nature’s
“children”—the hunters in lines 5–7 and the elves in line 36—also support the
speaker’s attitude toward the wall. In addition, we often associate the word wall