Analysis Of The Poem 'Acquainted With The Night'

Over 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust, 1.1 million were children and 6 million were Jewish. In the novel titled Night by Elie Wiesel, it tells about a kid name Elie Wiesel and his experience during the Holocaust. This novel will will also explain his thoughts/feelings during this tragic event. During the tragic event, Elie Wiesel lost his mother when the Holocaust started and lost his father at the end of the Holocaust. Three qualities that contributed to Wiesel’s survival was his intelligence, when he hid his left arm, his bravery, when he refused to separate from his father during the selection, and his determination, when he decided to not stop running during the flee.

As Roger Gilbert stated “Such grammar dispels the kind of precise sequential focus that the earlier poems display, instead creating a repetitive space in which constancy rather than change is emphasized”(49-74) the repetition of the phrase “i have” adds a routined feel to the poem and reveals that his walks never impact his outlook and leave him with a constant state of mind. The speakers determination to continuously proceed on his walks is demonstrated when he states “I have walked out in the rain- and back again in the rain. / i have outwalked the furthest city light.” The “furthest city light” is a representation of the final signs of life the speaker passes before he can reach absolute darkness physically as well as mentally. By entering blackness, the speaker demonstrates a desire for loneliness and isolation from any form of life. Similarly, Roger Gilbert’s stated: “the speaker makes a point of “outwalk[ing] the furthest city light”(49-74),leaving behind the human markers and habitations that create a sense of community, and faring into a lonelier kind of landscape.” The last words of the first and third lines rhyme- “night” and “light” to link them together and emphasize the contrast of the bright city lights compared to his own darkness. The night is oftenly associated with its own horrors and mystery, and speaker relates to the night because it corresponds with his own sorrowful

Literary Analysis of the poem "Hymn to the Night", by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, applying the "New Criticism" approach.

In the night one is frightened to try to determine whether one should undergo the perception of being fearful and unattended. To be hopeful and wanting to get through the position one is in during war and the separation of loved and dear ones. This is the darkness and negativity affecting people who may have been in the holocaust. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, portrays such graphic and traumatizing experiences one may have gone through in the holocaust. Which establishes night and darkness as a key subject to focus on throughout the book, it may be used metaphorically or literally in such context. A theme that may be used is, to lose one's consciousness and ones self worth may also lose their humanity and feelings when going through traumatic

The more of the world a person sees, the more he/she realizes that it is not as perfect as he/she thinks it is. When one matures, he/she gains knowledge and experiences that affect how he/she act and think. Their perspective of the world changes either positively or negatively. Night, an autobiographical memoir written by Elie Wiesel, tells of the horrors he faced as a child during the Holocaust. The more the readers read about his experiences, the more they see how his perspectives change throughout the novel. Emily Dickinson's poem “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” explains how one must conquer his/her fear in order to see more of the world. The way we perceive things change as we gain more knowledge and experience of the world we live in.

The experience of darkness is both individual and universal. Within Emily Dickinson’s “We grow accustomed to the Dark” and Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night,” the speakers engage in an understanding of darkness and night as much greater than themselves. Every individual has an experience of the isolation of the night, as chronicled in Frost’s poem, yet it is a global experience that everyone must face, on which Dickinson’s poem elaborates. Through the use of rhythm, point of view, imagery, and mood, each poet makes clear the fact that there is no single darkness that is too difficult to overcome.

In Emily Dickenson’s “We grow accustomed to the Dark” and Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night” distinct views of hesitation in life are explained, and are manifested with each authors different point of views, structure, sound, imagery, and metaphors.

The novel “Night” is a vivid representation of a man’s loss of faith from the beginning to the end of the catastrophic era in which this book takes place. As a young boy Elie’s inquisitive mind directed him to the synagogue where he would study the Kabbalah’s revelations and mysteries. Here is where “Moishe the beadle,” a friend to Elie, would sit with him in the synagogue and they would talk for hours about the intriguing secrets of Jewish mysticism. One important piece of advice that Moishe told Elie was, “There are a thousand and one gates allowing entry into the orchard of the mystical truth.” This simply meant he would need to pursue these answers on his own. However, Elie believed Moishe would help him bind his questions and answers as well, into one. These meetings were interrupted when Moishe was extracted from the Sighet where he experienced malice.

“I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.” from “Acquainted with the Night” shows the depression of the character because most of us relate to rain as an emotional moment and makes us feel vulnerable. When it rains, the whole atmosphere becomes very gloomy and sad, and the author is trying to express the characters sadness.

I chose to use a photo and a poem for this task. A key narrative that surrounds the Holocaust is that of remembering. There are museums, memorial sites, novels and numerous other forms of commemorating the Holocaust in order to ensure that as a society we do not forget, through the preservation of this narrative. This is to both show our respect for those who suffered during that time and to ensure it does not happen again. The poem is taken from Elie Wiesel’s novel Night which is set during the Holocaust and follows the experiences of a young man, from his home in a small town to his emancipation by Allied soldiers from a concentration camp (Wiesel, 2006). The image was created by satirist and artist Shahak Shapira by superimposing selfies taken by visitors to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin with actual photos taken during the Holocaust, to highlight the disrespectful nature ‘selfies’ at a site such as this (Demilked, 2017).

The speaker refers to the night as his acquaintance. This implies that the speaker has a lot of experience with the night, but has not become friends with it. Thus, because even the night, which has been alongside the speaker in comparison to anything or anyone else, is not a companion to the speaker, the idea of loneliness is enhanced. In addition, “rain” (2) is used to symbolize the speaker’s feelings of gloom and grief, because there is continuous pouring of the rain, which is unlikely to stop. In line 3, “city light” is used to convey the emotional distance between the speaker and society. Although the speaker has walked extensively, he has not yet interacted with anyone – thus distancing himself even further from society. Moreover, the moon, in lines 11 to 12, is used as a metaphor of the speaker’s feelings. The speaker feels extremely distant from society that he feels “unearthly.” The idea of isolation and loneliness in this poem is used as the theme of the poem; and the use of the setting and metaphors underscores the idea that the speaker feels abandoned from society.

Awakening at the dawn of day, A bright spark appears, The flame of the fire, Burning extraordinarily bright. The flame ignites, As fierce as can be, Turns plain sight, Into a sight to be seen.

“O greatly fortunate farmers, if only they knew/How lucky they are!” Virgil declares in Georgics, illustrating what I admire most about the poem; Virgil exalts the natural world and life on the farm in multiple ways, painting a vocation that is often seen as lowly, simple, and laborious as something of beauty that deserves widespread admiration (Virgil 83). While reading books one and two of Georgics, I noticed that this appreciation for the pastoral lifestyle is illustrated by the careful detail with which Virgil gives his instructions on how to farm; he goes so far as to suggest crop rotation, a method I did not even know existed during his era, and describes specific “methods to use to tell the different kinds of soil from one

“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.

“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul,” said William Maugham, a British playwright from the 19th century. Vincent Van Gogh, an artist who is considered by many one of the most inspirational artists in history, was no stranger to depicting his struggles in life or feelings in his work. Van Gogh’s piece Starry Night, designed in the year 1889, shows this to be true in that it was the result of his experiences in an asylum that encouraged this piece. Despite this work has being so well known, many critics and observers of the piece have differing views on what he was trying to communicate through it. Two prime examples of this can be seen by the views expressed in the poems entitled, “Vincent” and “The Starry Night”, written by Don McClean and Anne Sexton, respectively. While the poem “Vincent”, has a depressing tone to it, “The Starry Night”, by Anne Sexton, depicts Starry Night as having a more lively mood, which more accurately represents that of the painting, by Vincent Van Gogh.