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An Old Man's Winter Night Figurative Language

Decent Essays

Title “The human being is designed for many things. Loneliness is not one of them. We are not meant to go through this life alone.” ― Liz Tuccillo. 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. The speaker begins by talking of “All out-of-doors look[ing] darkly in at him / Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars” (1-2). Since it is not specified what is looking at him from the outside, it is perceived that everything is looking at him with looks of contempt. The use of the words “in separate stars” is used to imply …show more content…

The speaker being “[...] a light to no one but himself” suggests that he, apart from his lack of social interaction for quite some time, has distanced himself from others (15). By doing so, he is fading, his desolation, that is, his isolation is becoming too large for the coverage of the light. The speaker talks of the man being captivated by the moon, “[h]e consigned to the moon—such as she was, / So late-arising—to the broken moon” because, he sees himself in the moon (18-20). The moon does not produce her own light, she uses the light of the sun to illuminate herself, therefore her being broken means she is no longer shining. Similar to the man, who was lively at some point and over time has distanced himself from things that can illuminate and give him

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