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We Grow Accustomed To The Dark By Emily Dickinson Analysis

Decent Essays

In her poem We Grow Accustomed to the Dark, Dickinson makes use of darkness as a symbol to carry across the poem’s deeper meaning. The literal content of the poem describes walking through the darkness without light, but she insinuates the overall message through poetic devices. Dickinson cleverly applies the elements of imagery, connotative diction and structure, and point of view in order to communicate the true significance of darkness and night.

Imagery is especially prevalent in To the Dark, as the poem centers around the idea of darkness and how it is physically viewed by the human eye. Throughout the poem, the narrator assures the audience that they will “grow accustomed to the dark,” and uses several examples of imagery to describe the process. The first stanza has the narrator compare the light going away to, “When the Neighbor holds the Lamp / To witness her Goodbye-.” This could …show more content…

Her choice of words, such as dark, night, evenings, moon, star, and midnight, are all related to the nighttime. This and the constant repetition-of “darkness” and “dark” especially-bring the reader’s attention to the central theme of darkness in the poem. Darkness is often used as a metaphor for one’s struggles, which is a connection the reader can make due to poem’s use of priming. Dickinson structures her poem in short choppy sentences, possibly representing the small steps people take further into the darkness. She also capitalizes the first letter in words such as road, life, and dark; perhaps this suggests the significance of those words in particular. With the reader focusing in on such particular elements, they are able to see that the poem implies that stepping into the darkness takes one’s life onto a road filled with difficulty. In fact, the emphasis on the reader is intentionally brought about through Dickinson’s choice to use first

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