After you have read the poem, think about and write down thorough answers to each of the questions below. You may discuss your answers with another student in the class.

1. How many stanzas are in the poem?
2. Does the poem have a recognizable rhyme scheme?
3. Describe the meter of the poem.
4. Who is the speaker?
5. What is the main thing that the two neighbors do together?
6. Why do you think people build fences if they don’t have animals to keep in?
7. What does the speaker’s neighbor mean when he says: “Good fences make good neighbors”? Do you agree (in his situation)? Explain.
8. Does the speaker think they need a fence? Why or why not?
9. Reflect on the line “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know/ What I was walling in or walling out/ And to whom I was like to give offence.”
10. What does the speaker think of his neighbor?
11. What is the irony of the poem (of the speaker’s attitude about the wall)?
12. What do you think this poem is really about? What does it mean metaphorically? What does the wall between the neighbors symbolize? What types of walls do we have that separate people today (think about mental, rather than physical, walls)?
13. Do you think fences (the literal and figurative types) wall people in or wall them out?