The problem of human relations to each other has been reinforced in literature from the beginning of the twentieth century. More and more literary works manifest the idea of the “raising wall” among the people. The conception of separatism has gained force within the last 100 years. Sociologists believe that this conception is a natural reaction to the population growth on the planet, which leads to the violation and narrowing of individual’s personal space. In its turn people develop the feeling of greediness and envy. There are a lot of poems that are based on the theme of human relations. This work is dedicated to the comparison of two poems Mending wall and A Fance an onion, through manifesting the points of their similarity and difference in structure, word order, metric rhythm, the authors’ message and theme.
A Fance an onion is the poem that has no rhyme but a strong rhythm model. Each line is a separate thought that presents a certain episode of the poem. From the syntactic point of view the poem consists of the complex sentences, which contain elliptical parts and repetitions that harden the perception of the sense. The word order is direct but sometimes violated by the insertions that perform emphatic function:
“She takes a street car at half past five in the morning, Mrs Pietro Giovanni does”.
The poem Mending wall has a lot of contrast features in the syntactic structure of the sentences and a rhythm with the above mentioned poem. The sentences are also complex but the connection between their parts is not vivid and structurally sophisticated. They are more compound than complex. But the structure of the stanzas is more classical, and it simplifies the perception of the sense. Apart from this, the metric rhythm is more distinct than that in A Fance an onion due to the presence of the rhyming syllables in one strophe.
…The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made.
The author makes a great use of structural parallelism in order to simplify the sentences and make them sound rhythmically, which is adherent to the structure of A Fance an onion, where the author prefers more direct word order to rhythm.
The authors of both poems discover human wickedness and dignity on the examples of the poems’ characters. A Fance an onion looks like a styled summary of a good novel or drama. The greedy landowner oppresses his workers, who are girls and pregnant women, making them work 12 hours a day for beggarly waste. His antagonist is his worker, a girl who is happy despite the roughness of her life, because of her upcoming baby birth. Thus, the author makes use of the opposition between the true sweet feelings of the motherhood and a rough greediness of the landowner.
The author of Mending wall also makes use of the theme of greediness and suspiciousness of human nature emphasizing the old proverb “Good fences make good neighbors”. But the author’s protagonist does not support it and, while repairing the broken wall of the fence with his neighbor, is thinking about appropriateness of his deed.
Therefore, both poems are based on the discovering of human greediness and other personal demerits caused by social relations. The poem A Fance an onion has a more distinct structure which is less hardened by complex sentences. Thus, it presents the content in a more perceptible way. Besides, the author provides a wide representation of the situation the poem was based on and successfully manifests the opposition of two key topics. Due to these facts the poem possesses much of reader’s attention and interest.