Breaking Boundaries

The theme that is common to Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," Judith Oritz Cofer's "The Game," and Yusef Komunyakaa's "Slam, Dunk, & Hook," is breaking boundaries. In "Mending Wall," the narrator describes a wall that separates his property from his neighbors. The wall has no purpose because his neighbor has a pine tree while the narrator has an apple orchard, which does not cross the boundary. The narrator tells his neighbor to "eat the cones under his pines," hoping that he will realize that there is no purpose for the wall, and the neighbor responds with "good fences make good neighbors." The damages to the wall and the wall in general, ironically allow the narrator to communicate with his neighbor.
In Cofer's "The Game," a little girl is enclosed within the boundaries of her home because of a physical deformity. Having a humpback prevents her from going to school with other children. Yet she breaks away from this boundary everyday if only for a small time while she plays with the narrator in her own backyard. Similarly the narrator also breaks a boundary that people too often create. She ignores the girl’s physical traits and says, "She was the same as any of my other friends."
Komunyakaa's "Slam, Dunk, & Hook," displays this theme in that the death of "Sonny Boy's mama" brings out a part of the boys that they didn’t know they had before. On the day of her death, Sonny Boy "played nonstop all day, so hard our backboard splintered." They break through what they thought they were able to do, playing basketball and making moves "we didn’t know we had."
This theme can be applied to The Year of the City. The Year of the City allows members of the Loyola College community to break the boundary that separates us from the city. Too often we get caught up within the safe environment of Loyola, forgetting what exists beyond the walls of the campus. This theme gives us reason to venture out into Baltimore and bring some of the city back to the campus.