Boundaries & Barriers

In the simplest of terms, a boundary is merely a limit delineating one entity from another. Boundaries can be natural, man-made or even imaginary. Boundaries can be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. However, the one characteristic all boundaries share is that they divide, and create barriers. Such barriers can serve as elements of protection, structure, order, and individuality. The extent to which a particular barrier serves its purpose or creates a struggle is a common thematic focus among authors chiefly because all humans have boundaries and set boundaries. It is only when a character challenges, examines, or breaks these barriers that the reader recognizes and examines the significance of boundaries in his own life and society in general.
The authors of each of the pieces, “Mending Wall”, “Slam, Dunk, & Hook”, “The Game”, and “Death and Life of Great American Cities” uniquely examine the various kind of barriers that literally and figuratively surround us in everyday life. In drawing parallels between the various works we recognize how the authors are successful in effectively illustrating how boundaries can simultaneously fragment and unify individuals, thoughts, and physical entities.
Robert Frost’s “The Mending Wall” is a unique piece because it quintessentially presents the way in which a poem or literary piece can portray the dual nature of boundaries. In this poem, Frost notes that before constructing a wall he would question, “What I was walling in or walling out”? While his neighbor repeatedly contends that “good fences make good neighbors”, Frost contemplates “why they make good neighbors”. In dividing themselves by building fences, the individuals have lost the “something” that once unified them. Perhaps the “something” Frost references that “doesn’t love a wall” is pure human emotion. Often times people create barriers to protect themselves from getting hurt. However, it is ultimately emotion, that like everything else seeks freedom.
It is an element of this very struggle that Kahu faces in Ihimaera’s “The Whale Rider”, as she crosses the boundary between family tradition and personal discovery. Kahu knows that she is destined to be the whale rider and uses all of her strength to prove this to her ignorant grandfather, who believes only a male can fulfill this task of family tradition. When Kahu accomplishes this goal at the conclusion of the novel, she proves that it is possible to breakdown barriers, and in this case stereotypes as well. When Kahu proves to her grandfather and tribe that she is the whale rider, she also proves that women share the same capabilities of men, a barrier of our society in general.
Komunyakaa’s “Slam, Dunk, and Hook” also develops a focus on boundaries but with a fresher, more unusual perspective. In this poem, Komunyakaa explores an environment in which there are very little boundaries, a basketball court. Of course there are physical boundaries including sidelines, the key, and the half-court line, but there are no boundaries preventing an individual or team from a fast break or slam-dunk. There are no boundaries limiting how high you can jump or how far you can pass the ball to break a different barrier and win the game.
This type of unconventional or more abstract boundary contrasts the physical boundaries explored by Jacobs in her piece, “Death and Life of Great American Cities”. In this excerpt, Jacobs identifies the various physical boundaries that divide cities including bodies of water, train tracks, college campuses, neighborhood lines, highways, business districts, and even sidewalks. Jacobs determines that the most important factor is determining what barriers take away and what they give back to the community. While she points out that it is the different neighborhoods in cities that give them personality, Jacob also indicates that “trouble arises when districts are bisected by borders…for this is a way to tear a city to tatters”.
The duality of boundaries makes them a unique way in which humans divide physical and nonphysical things for purposes ranging from protection to structure to individuality. While humans are inherently motivated to build mental and emotional barriers of protection, breaking down barriers is a method of displaying strength and overcoming obstacles. Each of these works illustrates a different type of boundary and how groundbreaking crossing a barrier can be in proving strength, equality and individuality.