The solitude of a rainy nighttime walk invokes thoughts of sadness and isolation, in Robert Frost’s poem “Acquainted with the Night.” A short narrative poem has the speaker describing a lonely walk during the nighttime hours in a city setting. The poem is very dark in many aspects, the mood, the night, and the visual and audible observations of the walker. There are thoughts and feelings of loneliness and despair, when reading this poem. The impression of the poem is one of a lost soul who has had a possible tragic event in his life or is living unsatisfactory life. The walk in the night and its surroundings are reflections on his solitary soul.
The style of the poem is a sonnet; the language used in the poem is clear and simple. The poet Frost tells a story in easy to read form. There is repetition throughout the poem. For example; “”I have been”, I have walked out in rain,” I have out walked””, (Frost 1-2-3). There is a comparison within the poem, a night watchman (the only person mentioned) in the poem and the walker. Frost draws the comparison of them both being alone at night, with the night watchman one walking with purpose, whereas the walker’s purpose is not defined.
The mood of the poem is one of brooding and sorrow, along with loneliness from stance 2, line 1“I have looked down the saddest city lane” (Frost 4). The mood of sorrow reflected in the poem by the previous line could be a visual description of closed up shops or rundown buildings looking worse for wear in the nighttime, deserted, and empty; it must be bad as it is not just sad but described as saddest. No mention of persons around the city lane, which adds to the solitude and emptiness of the night. The brooding by the speaker gives way to melancholy, as he...
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... alone at night. Although not mentioned in poem, there is an overture of a burden or “sigh” by the speakers tone. The symbolism of the night conveys a sense of fear. There is no feeling within the poem that the speaker finds any solace in the walk or with the conditions of the night; darkness, rain, silence, solitude are all that is found. The poem conjures up the fear that is felt when in darkness be it the actual darkness of a street, or the darkness in thought. Most people are able to picture the fear that is of the walker in the poem as who has not been in that situation in life. We walk alone at times even when we are surrounded by a bustling world with our inner thoughts and fears affecting us in darkness and light.
Works Cited
Frost, Robert. ”Acquainted with the Night.” Literature to Go. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/ St Martin’s, 2011. 429. Print
In “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” and “Acquainted with the Night” the darkness or night is the most prominent topic throughout the poems but have different meanings. While both poets address this topic in their poems, Dickinson transitions from an attitude of nerves to one of inspiration, while Frost turns to the night as a getaway from harsh society. The night is used in both as negative symbol. The use of imagery and structure are very important to help get the message of darkness across to the readers. Even though the authors have a similar theme, Frost is specific and to the point, while Dickinson’s makes her poetry more broad and can relate to a variety of readers.
Eliezer Wiesel is a 14-year-old Orthodox Jewish boy from Sighet, Transylvania. Elie has one younger sister Tzipora, 2 older sisters Hilda and Bèa, and is the only son. His father is a prominent leader of the Jewish community. Ellie wants to study Jewish mysticism, but his father tells him he is too young. So he befriends Moche the beadle, a handyman, so he can be taught mysticism. Moche teaches him to ask God the right questions even though he will never receive the right answer. in 1944 Germans came to power an occupied Hungary, and soon controlled Sighet. At this point, the Germans begin their plan to get rid of the Jews. They moved Eli and his family into a ghetto. There were two gether does, small one large one. Eli and his family moved to the larger ghetto. They stayed in the ghetto for a while, until they were put on two trains and sent to Birkenau. when everyone was out of it rains, everyone was split into two groups, the men and the women. This was the last time le saw his mother and his sister Tzipora. Eli and his father were put into the same groups and that's when Ell...
Our speaker seems a solemn individual. One, whom explores a city alone and by night, a favorable past time for anybody who does not want to be bothered. Yet, as evidenced in the form of the poem, our speaker seems to feel a spark of excitement when human interaction becomes a possibility within our story. However, it seems that our poet, Robert Frost, displays an uncanny knack for misdirection throughout the entirety of this poem, and unless we meticulously pick this poem apart, we may miss the real meaning behind Frost 's words. Case in point: At first glance, this poem, about a lonely individual, appears to focus on their desire for human companionship, but, just perhaps, our speaker is actually loath to admit his true feelings, that companionship is what they desire the least.
The night is a symbol for dark moments of solitude during the speaker’s life. Through being “acquainted with the night” (line 1), the speaker is saying that he is familiar with darkness, proving how symbolism brings out a detached tone with the help of diction, saying that isolated darkness is something the speaker experiences regularly. The exertion of the night as symbolism creates an image for readers to realize that Frost did not actually mean nighttime in his poem; he used the night as symbolism to provide deeper insight and bring the image of our own dark times to describe as “the night”(line 1) just as the speaker of “Acquainted With the Night” did. Symbolism goes on to present itself in line 2, the “rain” is used as a symbol for tears and melancholy. The rain was not meant to be read literally, but rather symbolically as tears, or times of mourning over the harsh struggles in life, just as the speaker did when he “walked out in rain and back in rain” (line 2) meaning he walked into and out of life’s struggles. If the weather is cold and rainy, no one goes outside because of the gloomy clouds and cold rain. Similarly, no one reached out to the speaker in “Acquainted With the Night” during his gloomy periods of “rain”(line 2) or sadness, which expresses
The poem talks about people being sick of society, and want to be isolated from it. Even in the first line, he made an analogy between December being dark and dingy, by saying "A winter's day - in a deep and dark December." The month of December is usually likened to being cold, dark, and 'dangerous'. He also says that it is a lonely December in the second line where he says "I am alone gazing from my window to the street below" he feels left out, and now wants to be left alone, like an island, or a rock. Like in the second poem, where he says that he "has no need of friendship."
The first half of the poem creates a sense of place. The narrator invites us to go “through certain half-deserted streets” on an evening he has just compared to an unconscious patient (4). To think of an evening as a corpselike event is disturbing, but effective in that the daytime is the time of the living, and the night time is the time of the dead. He is anxious and apprehensive, and evokes a sense of debauchery and shadows. Lines 15-22 compare the night’s fog to the actions of a typical cat, making the reader sense the mystery of a dark, foggy night in a familiar, tangible way. One might suppose that “In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo” refers to a room in a brothel, where the seedy women for hire talk about elevated art between Johns (13). The narrator creates a tension in the image of dark deserted streets and shady activities in the dark.
“Its deserted streets are a potent symbol of man and nature 's indifference to the individual. The insistence of the narrator on his own self-identity is in part an act of defiance against a constructed, industrial world that has no place for him in its order” (Bolton). As the poem continues on, the narrator becomes aware of his own consciousness as he comes faces nature and society during his walk. He embraces nature with the rain, dark and moon but he also reinforces his alienation from society as he ignores the watchman and receives no hope of cries for him. The societal ignorance enforces our belief that he is lonely on this gloomy night. “When he passes a night watchman, another walker in the city with whom the speaker might presumably have some bond, he confesses, ‘I… dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.’ Likewise, when he hears a voice in the distance, he stops in his tracks--only to realize that the voice is not meant "to call me back or say goodbye" (Bolton). The two times he had a chance to interact with the community, either he showed no interest in speaking or the cry wasn’t meant for him. These two interactions emphasize his loneliness with the
- Frost, Robert. “Acquainted With the Night.” Robert Frost: Selected Poems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 58-59
Not only does Robert Frost cherish nature, but he also has a love for darkness in this piece. The darkness signifies the loss of something and the dark soul. The speaker was a child in a home, but that home is no longer there. Robert Frost uses words such as night, dim, unlit place, and sad to talk about the darkness.
Mertins, Louis. Robert Frost: Life and Talks - Walking. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965. 135.
From the first stanza of this song, you get put into a scene. You know almost immediately that it is about someone, and it is the middle of December, but without stating the obvious, it paints a more illustrated picture for you. The first line states, “A winters day, in a deep and dark December” and I could almost immediately feel a cool breeze around me. When I normally think of a winter’s day, I think of people playing in the snow, and having a good time. This may be because I grew up in Southern California where there has been a lack of snow, but in my head, that is what I imagine. Having them state, in a deep and dark December, turns my attitudes to the more pessimistic way of looking at things. The image of children playing in the snow in my head has now turned to cold and dark emptiness. Reinstating my idea of emptiness, the next line follows with the simply statement, “I am alone”. Personally, I hate being alone. So to have the opening words place us in a deep and dark setting, and then state that you are alone, automatically puts me in a negative mindset.
Frost uses nature as a reflection of human experiences; just like humanity it can have seasons and life cycles. He uses different scenes to depict a certain mood for readers to step into the psychological happening of a man. The idea of how seasons change, Frost compares it through the life cycles that humans encounter. Contrary to popular opinion, I believe that nature is not Frost’s central theme in his poetry; it is about the relationship that man has with nature in which can be seen from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “The Road Not Taken”, and “An Old Man’s Winter Night.”
New York: Henry Holt, 1999. Print. Richardson, Mark. The Ordeal of Robert Frost: The Poet and His Poetics.
1. Frost, Robert. Robert Frost’s Poems. Ed. Louis Untermeyer. New York: Washington Square Press, 1968. 194.
In the poem “The Road Not Taken”, author Robert Frost uses the simple image of a road to represent a person’s journey through life. A well-established poet, Frost does a proficient job of transforming a seemingly common road to one of great importance, which along the way helps one identify who they really are. This poem is one of self-discovery. Frost incorporates strong elements of poetry such as theme, symbolism, rhyme scheme, diction, imagery, and tone to help create one of his most well known pieces about the human experience.