Analytical Essay - The Red Convertible
Walker 1
Mary Walker
Ms. Alice Turner
Composition & Rhetoric II
September 19, 2014
Analytically Comparing “The Red Convertible” and “Mending Wall”
I have decided to write an analytical essay as to the similarities that I perceived upon reading Lyman Lamartine’s “The Red Convertible” and Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”. The first similarities that I encountered were the settings of both works. Most of The Red Convertible is out in nature. The author mentions almost fleetingly about living in a reservation so your mind drifts to the location and you sense the dirt roads filled with modest homes and busted up jalopies. After he and his brother purchase the convertible, he describes a great big willow tree.
In Indian society, willow trees signify wisdom so I gather that perhaps it sticks out in his memory because in the great wide open of God’s creation, perhaps he and his brother gleaned some great wisdom about life in general under the limbs of this willow tree. He mentions how his brother went off to Vietnam upon their return. One can’t help but to imagine the completely different surrounding that his brother found himself in. I imagine wetlands, tropical jungles, hot and sticky air that feels as though you are breathing water due to the humidity. Just as they might have found a bit of themselves in the great wide open adventures they had in the car prior to the war, his brother lost a lot of himself in the wet, humid, dangerous jungles of Vietnam.
In Robert Frost’s “Mending Walls”, the setting is again outdoors. This time, the setting is in cold, damp England. I gather this from the way the author speaks about fox hunts and stone walls between neighbors. Here, he and his neighbor are again outside walking the stone wall border between their properties. Two different people united and yet separated by a simple wall.
Walker 2
While their wall is a physical wall, the wall that later separated the brothers in the previous story was an
Mary Walker
Ms. Alice Turner
Composition & Rhetoric II
September 19, 2014
Analytically Comparing “The Red Convertible” and “Mending Wall”
I have decided to write an analytical essay as to the similarities that I perceived upon reading Lyman Lamartine’s “The Red Convertible” and Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”. The first similarities that I encountered were the settings of both works. Most of The Red Convertible is out in nature. The author mentions almost fleetingly about living in a reservation so your mind drifts to the location and you sense the dirt roads filled with modest homes and busted up jalopies. After he and his brother purchase the convertible, he describes a great big willow tree.
In Indian society, willow trees signify wisdom so I gather that perhaps it sticks out in his memory because in the great wide open of God’s creation, perhaps he and his brother gleaned some great wisdom about life in general under the limbs of this willow tree. He mentions how his brother went off to Vietnam upon their return. One can’t help but to imagine the completely different surrounding that his brother found himself in. I imagine wetlands, tropical jungles, hot and sticky air that feels as though you are breathing water due to the humidity. Just as they might have found a bit of themselves in the great wide open adventures they had in the car prior to the war, his brother lost a lot of himself in the wet, humid, dangerous jungles of Vietnam.
In Robert Frost’s “Mending Walls”, the setting is again outdoors. This time, the setting is in cold, damp England. I gather this from the way the author speaks about fox hunts and stone walls between neighbors. Here, he and his neighbor are again outside walking the stone wall border between their properties. Two different people united and yet separated by a simple wall.
Walker 2
While their wall is a physical wall, the wall that later separated the brothers in the previous story was an