A Literary Explication of “Acquainted with the Night” In the poem “Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost, the speaker sets a tone of loneliness, acceptance, and depression, all throughout the poem. In this poem the speaker surroundings are all distant, he has no family or friends. He walks “down the saddest city lane” (Frost, 1928, 4) feeling helpless but has never found anything to comfort his depression. Leaving the reader a connection and a better understanding of his life. In his poem, “Acquainted with the Night” Frost uses imagery, a metaphor, and irony to illustrate how depression and loneliness affects the speaker. In this poem the first literary element that Frost uses is imagery. The use of imagery gives his readers a deep …show more content…
The use of allegory is to help the reader understand the poet and why he wrote this poem. The speaker experiences many difficult challenges and also suffering through depression most of his life. When Frost began to explain that he has “been one acquainted with the night” (Frost, 1928, 1), which referred to loneliness and isolation he felt. The speaker states, “I walked out in rain-and back in rain” (Frost, 1928, 2). This is also where Frost uses the literacy element of allegory. He was always in and out of depression. “I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet” (Frost, 1928, 7) or someone attempted to communicate, but nobody was around to acknowledge him. Frost wanted the reader to feel the darkness and loneliness that he felt while walking down the street. The speaker felt that nobody was concerned “but not to call me back or say good-by” (Frost, 1928, 10) and nobody cared. “Proclaimed in the time was neither wrong nor right” (Frost, 1928, 13), meaning that Frost was giving up his fight against depression. What the readers may have not paid attention to is how the depression is affecting the speaker. This is the allegory of depression because you never know what an individual may or may not be going through. This can be very heartbreaking and hard to understand for families and
is saying, and Frosts personal pain that he is suffering from that he ingrains into this poem. The
The poems are based on emotions for example in “We grow accustomed to the dark” and in line “when light is put away” what I think the author means by this is that she does not see the light in much things anymore and she has gotten so used to her depressing emotion that she's used to this. In the “Acquainted with the night” also shows us that the author is sort of in a depressed state of mind and sees it as a companion and from the author's frequent use of “I” in every line we can see that he is alone. While in “Acquainted with the night” we read that there are people in the poem but they do not honestly mean much since the people do not actually interact with the author and in “We grow accustomed to the dark” they mention a neighbor but he
In the poem, “An Old Man’s Winter Night” Robert Frost talks of an old man living in his isolated home. Because of his age, he has trouble remembering where he is and how he got there. Through the use of diction, figurative language, and imagery, Frost accentuates a simple tale of a dying isolated man to reiterate the meaning that it is against human nature to be in isolation and by defying this notion, it causes one to become inhumane and can be the downfall to one’s life. The choice of words in the poem emphasize the old man’s dreariness and separation from humankind.
Frost used several different words in the poem as metaphors because they were used to describe something else. For example rain, was used for the meaning of sadness or sorrow. Night, was used for describing depression or loneliness. Luminary clock, represented the light of the moon. The watchmen, I believe meant for judgment within himself. Light, represented hope. Putting meaning to the metaphors that Frost used helps you to really get a better understanding of the poem.
The style of the poem is more of a narrative, it paints a picture in my head of what is happening in it. It is not too long, but in the short length it spills a lot about the ideal of it. Frost is the main person speaking to us in this he is telling about his experience and how he's warning us about what could possibly happen.
The poem is centered around the loneliness of the narrator and about how he is unable to convey his thoughts and feelings. The poem begins and finishes with the most important line: “I have been one acquainted with the night” (Frost). Darkness, evil, and loneliness are all connotations of night, so when the narrator states he has been acquainted with the night, he means that all those connotations are extremely familiar to him.
The two poems “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Acquainted with the Night” written by Robert Frost are very similar to each other because of the simplistic form of language used and the uses of metaphors. When we first read the poem, it looks like an ordinary poem but once we go in depth and understand the meaning, it becomes so much more. Both of the poem has a very dark, gloomy and lonely setting with a really mysterious tone. There are different metaphors used in each poem to symbolize death; “Sleep” in “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Night” in “Acquainted with the Night.” The characters in the two poem are both in a journey and has come
Our lives, whether we realize it or not, revolve around emotion. When plagued with sadness, we find it hard to function; our daily lives hindered and impossible to live. When we feel jubilant, life is comfortable and satisfying. But whatever the circumstance, emotions will eventually lose their grip and sink into the river of time, forgotten until mentioned again. Depression, however, has a profound effect. Depression doesn't fade like emotion; it clings to the minds of the unfortunate souls possessing it, never surrendering its grip. It cemented itself onto the likes of Vincent Van Gogh, Mark Twain, and Robert Frost. Frost's poem "Acquainted with the night," offers insight into the life of a lonely soul affected by depression. Frost emphasizes the seclusion depression brings, isolating those who have it from the rest of the world.
Poetry is a literary medium which often resonates with the responder on a personal level, through the subject matter of the poem, and the techniques used to portray this. Robert Frost utilises many techniques to convey his respect for nature, which consequently makes much of his poetry relevant to the everyday person. The poems “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ and “The mending wall” strongly illuminate Frost’s reverence to nature and deal with such matter that allows Frost to speak to ordinary people.
The poetic techniques were symbolism, imagery, and tone. Symbolism is the most powerfully used technique due to the fact a good number of lines located in this poem is used to signify a certain object or idea related to our life or today’s world. Imagery in the sense that you can visualize the path, the yellow wood, the undergrowth, the divergence; it is all made very vivid. Frost did this throughout; you know trying to stimulate the reader’s mood using one’s senses. In this poem, imagery permits the reader to imagine the scene that this poem takes place in resulting in an enhanced understanding of the theme. The tone Frost’s work presents is an insecure attitude which allows the theme to be brought out due to the fact the theme relates to a dilemma in one’s life. These techniques strongly aid in the revealing of this specific theme.
Robert Frost had a fascination towards loneliness and isolation and thus expressed these ideas in his poems through metaphors. The majority of the characters in Frost’s poems are isolated in one way or another. In some poems, such as “Acquainted with the Night” and “Mending Wall,” the speakers are lonely and isolated from their societies. On other occasions, Frost suggests that isolation can be avoided by interaction with other members of society, for example in “The Tuft of Flowers,” where the poem changes from a speaker all alone, to realizing that people are all connected in some way or another. In Robert Frost’s poems “Acquainted with the Night,” “Mending Wall,” and “The Tuft of Flowers,” the themes insinuate the idea of loneliness
“Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost dramatizes the conflict that the speaker experiences with the outside world, which has rejected him, or perhaps which he has rejected. The poem is composed of fourteen lines and seven sentences, all of which begin with “I have.” Frost’s first and last line, “I have been one acquainted with the night,” emphasizes what it means for the speaker to be “acquainted with the night” (line 1; 14). The speaker describes his walk in the night as journey, in which he has “walked out of rain—and back in rain” and “outwalked the furthest city light” (line 2-3). Through the depiction of the changing weather conditions, Frost signifies the passage of time, perhaps indicating that the narrator has been on his journey for a lengthy period of time and has traveled through many cities. Furthermore, the imagery of the rain at night creates a forlorn atmosphere in the poem.
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” Robert Frost once said. As is made fairly obvious by this quote, Frost was an adroit thinker. It seems like he spent much of his life thinking about the little things. He often pondered the meaning and symbolism of things he found in nature. Many readers find Robert Frost’s poems to be straightforward, yet his work contains deeper layers of complexity beneath the surface. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “ The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.
Not only are metaphors utilized throughout the poem, but a literary device known as Imagery is as well. Imagery is alternative as important a device for it allows for the reader to have a clear picture of what the character in the poem is visualizing. Furthermore, it also helps covey the theme the author is aiming to represent to the reader. Imagery is made known in stanza two line three, which states, “Because it was grassy and wanted wear” (Myer, 1091). Here the author is using imagery to inform the readers the traveler is coming up with a reason for why one path could be more favorable over the other. The reader analyzes this line of imagery to obtain a clearer representation of the traveler’s decision-making process. Another line where the author uses imagery is in stanza two line five, which states, “Had worn them really about the same” (Myer, 1091). Here the author is using imagery to inform the reader that the paths are “worn” down, which informs the reader that both of his choices have been equally chosen by people before him. These examples help the reader begin to form the theme of self-justification in decision-making. After analyzing the metaphors and the imagery Frost uses in this poem, the reader can conclude so far that the theme the poet is conveying
In his poem “Acquainted with the Night,” Robert Frost describes a character who spends his nights wandering the city streets. The reader can infer from both Frost’s tone, and the time of day in which the speaker chooses to walk, that the character is in a world of isolation. This is especially evident in the lines, “When far away an interrupted cry/ Came over houses from another street,/ But not to call me back or say good-by” (Frost 898). From this line, the reader understands that the poem’s speaker feels as if he is completely isolated in the world. In a similar way, E. E. Cummings poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town” expresses the loneliness felt by people of this era. Cummings creative use of pronouns gives the poem a double entendre. The characters, anyone and noone, can represent their literal meanings, or a single man and woman. Therefore, when Cummings writes that “noone loves him more by more,” he could mean that anyone is being loved greatly, or not at all. This loneliness is expressed yet again when Cummings informs the reader, “Women and men (both little and small)/ cared for anyone not at all” (Cummings 922). The works of both Frost and Cummings both portray the hardship that accompanied the feeling of loneliness during the modern