Because the neighbor gets the last word, it’s possible to read “Good fences make good neighbors” as the poem’s straightforward message. A more complex reading, alert to Frost’s ironic style, would side firmly with the speaker. In this view, the speaker nurses a healthy suspicion of barriers that serve no clear purpose; he is open to communication and new ideas, wary of anything that arbitrarily divides people
I didn’t realize there were some people out there saying, “Good fences make good neighbors” unironically until today. Like the whole poem is the narrator talking about how he isn’t so sure if it’s true and his neighbor just repeating it. I mean, damn, it’s not even a subtext. Like this excerpt pretty heavy handedly says that maybe you shouldn’t build an arbitrary wall:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/150774/robert-frost-mending-wall :
I didn’t realize there were some people out there saying, “Good fences make good neighbors” unironically until today. Like the whole poem is the narrator talking about how he isn’t so sure if it’s true and his neighbor just repeating it. I mean, damn, it’s not even a subtext. Like this excerpt pretty heavy handedly says that maybe you shouldn’t build an arbitrary wall: