Robert Frost

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.

In Emily Dickenson's "We Grow Accustomed to the Dark," and in Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night," the poets use imagery of darkness. The two poems share much in common in terms of structure, theme, imagery, and motif. Both poems are five stanzas long: brief and poignant. The central concepts of being "accustomed" to something, and being "acquainted" with something convey a sense of familiarity. However, there are core differences in the ways Dickenson and Frost craft their poems. Although both Dickenson and Frost write about darkness, they do so with different points of view, imagery, and structure.

Darkness is a recurring image in literature that evokes a universal unknown, yet is often entrenched in many meanings. A master poet, Emily Dickinson employs darkness as a metaphor many times throughout her poetry. In “We grow accustomed to the dark” (#428) she talks of the “newness” that awaits when we “fit our Vision to the Dark.” As enigmatic and shrouded in mystery as the dark she explores, Dickinson's poetry seems our only door to understanding the recluse. As she wrote to her friend T.W. Higginson on April 15, 1862, “the Mind is so near itself – it cannot see, distinctly”(Letters 253). In this musing, she acquiesces to a notion that man remains locked in an internal struggle with himself. This inner

Post Modern era with its technological advancement introduced immense “political and military giants” which included Communism, Nazism, and Americanism, but also targeted Christian faith (Shelley, 2008, p. 417). According to Worldview (2017), it also introduced atheism, a “belief that there is no God, no supernatural Creator, no Divine moral lawgiver, and no ultimate Judge of mans actions” followed by religious pluralism, “belief that one must be tolerant of all religious beliefs because no one religion can be true.” Once again, Christians required different ways of uniting, thinking, and coping as the world once again faced changed. To gain understanding of what humility as a concept meant in this period, the following authors will be

A poem can paint a thousand images in one’s mind. The poem, Acquainted with the Night, presents a graphic picture of a lonely, depressed man, who is possibly an insomniac, walking the streets on a sad, rainy night .This poem shows the different emotions that the author goes through in order to cope with heartbreak. The poem is aimed at the world in general, and the themes of depression, loneliness, and sadness prevails across the entire poem. The poem follows the format with 3-line stanzas and a scheme of rhyming aba bcb cdc dad aa. This poem proves that the author is going through turmoil within himself and is struggling as the love of his life has moved on with no trace like a thief in the night. The author starts the Poem off as follows;

However, Frosts use of the term "I" expresses solidarity between each individual, whereas Dickinson uses "we" to express humanity's sense of loneliness. Dickinson's imagery of darkness represents how all humans in some point of their lives will become lost. "Then -- fit our vision to the dark-- / And meet the Road -- erect/ And so of larger -- Darkness -- / Those Evenings of the Brain" (7-9). Dickinson's poem represents darkness as an ongoing event, but humanity must continue to adjust to break away from the grasps of it. While Frost's poem seems to be gloomier than Dickinson's, her poem shows more hope in that humanity's time will come once they learn to cope with the feeling of loneliness and adapt to the dark situations that life may throw at us. Though her characters may be lost in the darkness, it's shown to be a natural point in each and every one lives. The audience now knows that Dickinson's wants humanity to move forward even when presented with the unknown. Dickinson's use of imagery shows the audience how humanity's loneliness can be its own weakness, although this may be true encourages us to move on forth even when we don't know where the road may take

Most of us are accustomed to the light, we live and prosper in the light; it’s such a familiar thing. But imagine one day that light vanishes and it’s gone, the only thing that’s left is the darkness and it’ll be there forever, so growing accustomed to it is not an option. That’s exactly what Dickinson’s poems “We Grow Accustomed To The Dark” and “Before I Got My Eyes Put Out” are about, but on a metaphorical level. In those two poems she gives a message about how happiness disappears and depression comes, but also how her viewpoint is changed and how she takes a safer and more isolating approach.

There are several likenesses and differences in these poems. They each have their own meaning; each represent a separate thing and each tell a different story. However, they are all indicative of Frost’s love of the outdoors, his true enjoyment of nature and his wistfulness at growing old. He seems to look back at youth with a sad longing.

Conclusively, Frost uses multiple literary devices to create a more easily understood piece. Frost clearly depicts a real life situation in this poem by creating a problem involving decision making. Frost begins the poem by showing two roads, both covered in leaves. Both paths appear to be worn at about the same condition, but Frost cannot decide whether or not one road is better than another. He expresses his decision making process by elaborating on how he still would like to keep the first path for another day. However, he changes ideas and states how his decision that he took with the less traveled path was life-changing. The extended metaphor allows the reader to understand the figurative meaning of the roads, and apply them to real-life

A common motif established in Dickinson’s “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” and Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night” is the concept of darkness and night, and how overwhelmingly consequential the effects of being submerged in darkness may have on a person. The concepts are intertwined within each poem, and can be compared and contrasted through the literary elements of point of view, imagery, and structure.

In his poem, “Acquainted with the Night,” Robert Frost repeatedly utilizes the symbol of “the night.” Night has come to represent many things in literature, from Elie Wiesel’s fire-filled novel to the book Good Night Moon. The only question seems to be which sentiment will be personified; however, Frost characterizes his symbol in a variety of different ways, seemingly suggesting that night is more of a mindset than one specific emotion. Throughout the poem this mindset can be seen to involve monotony, grief, and isolationism. First, the words “I have” are repeated at the beginning of every line conveying, not only a sense that he or she is alone with the word “I,” but also showing disinclination towards anything more vivid than the word “have.”

In Emily Dickinson’s lyrical poem “There’s a certain slant of light” she describes a revelation that is experienced on cold “winter afternoons.” Further she goes to say that this revelation of self “oppresses, like the Heft of Cathedral Tunes” and causes “Heavenly Hurt”, yet does not scare for it is neither exterior nor permanent. This only leaves it to be an internal feeling, and according to Dickinson that is where all the “Meanings” lie. There’s no way for this feeling to be explained, all that is known is that it is the “Seal Despair”, and an “imperial affliction”. These descriptions have a rather powerful connotation in showing the oppressive nature of his sentiment. There is an official mark of despair and an imperial affliction

Robert Frost has been described as an ordinary man with a deep respect for nature, talking to ordinary people. To what extent do you agree with this view?

“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”.