In Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," what do the wall and the two farmers represent?

In Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," first published in 1914, the farmers represent individuals, groups, societies, or anything subject to a division or boundary. The wall represents those boundaries themselves. 

In the poem, two farmers meet to repair a wall that runs along the border of their properties. One farmer, the persona, reflects on how hunters, animals, and nature itself incessantly bring down the wall, and wonders if the wall is needed at all. When the...

In Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," first published in 1914, the farmers represent individuals, groups, societies, or anything subject to a division or boundary. The wall represents those boundaries themselves. 

In the poem, two farmers meet to repair a wall that runs along the border of their properties. One farmer, the persona, reflects on how hunters, animals, and nature itself incessantly bring down the wall, and wonders if the wall is needed at all. When the persona asks his neighbor about this latter notion, he only replies, "good fences make good neighbors" (26). The poem then challenges the notion that boundaries are necessary. The crucial, contradictory lines, "Something there is that doesn't want a wall" and "good fences make good neighbors" are both repeated twice (1, 26, 34, 44). The persona reflects on how nature itself seems to disapprove of the wall by dismantling it through exposure and erosion. He then concedes that the wall does in a way bring him and his neighbor together; repairing the wall becomes a kind of "outdoor game" (21). He surmises that perhaps walls, or boundaries, are required in some situations, such as those in which "there are cows" (30). However, his wall only separates two orchards. The ironic final lines reveal that the neighbor's only motivation for repairing the wall is tradition: "He will not go behind his father's saying / And he likes having thought of it so well." He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors" (42-44). He simply repeats his father's mantra; he will not "go behind it" or critically evaluate the truthfulness of his father's claim. The wall itself then represents the separations or divisions we encounter in our own life, and the farmers, those subject to these divisions.