We Grow Accustomed To The Dark

When people think of Emily Dickinson, they think of a white dressed, ghostly woman hidden in the corridors of home, writing poem after poem. They do not think of the actual person Emily was. Emily Dickinson grew up in a rich, social, scholarly environment. She could have chosen many paths that would have led her to a completely different life, but because of circumstances, the social, high energy girl with a sense of humor became isolated by her own choice. Though Emily Dickinson’s depression is romanticized, sickness, social life, and death led her to seclusion and deep poems.

Emily Dickinson was an exceptional writer through the mid-late 1800’s. She never published any of her writings and it wasn’t until after her death that they were even discovered. The complexity of understanding her poems is made prevalent because of the fact that she, the author, cannot expound on what her writing meant. This causes others to have to speculate and decide for themselves the meaning of any of her poems. There are several ways that people can interpret Emily Dickinson’s poems; readers often give their opinion on which of her poems present human understanding as something boundless and unlimited or something small and limited, and people always speculate Dickinson’s view of the individual self.

In their eyes is the truth. The speaker in Dickinson’s poem promotes adaptation as the primary response to the darkness; one must, “fit our Vision to the Dark –” before acting. With courage and conviction can the speaker finally move forward “And meet the Road – erect”. Familiarization to the darkness instills a sense of fortitude with which the speaker suggests may assist until the light returns. While the speaker in Dickinson’s poem chooses to face the darkness, the speaker in Frost’s poem becomes enveloped within it, shying away from the surrounding society. Embarrassed by this nightly wandering, the speaker scarcely responds to meeting the watchman on his beat, saying, “And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.” By lowering the eyes, the speaker assumes a passive role, choosing to dwell within the night rather than facing it. This melancholy response may appear cowardly against the courageous action of the other poem, but the speaker knows that one must become acquainted with the night before moving on from this solitary lifestyle. In both poems, the reaction to the darkness is within the eyes. They must change themselves to face the darkness, or let the night change

One of two ways that the author’s use of dashes and unusual capitalization are used to contribute to my understanding of the theme of darkness in the poem is by having a dash after the word “dark” in the very first line of the poem it draws attention to the word, this is shown in the following excerpt “We grow accustomed to the Dark --” this is strengthened when in the second line, when the author chose to capitalize the word “when” before the phrase “…light is put away--” therefore, strengthening the theme of darkness. Another way that the author’s use of dashes and unusual capitalization are used to contribute to my understanding of the theme of darkness in the poem is by capitalizing the words “a” and “moment” they caused a sense of hesitation,

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 poem “Before I got my eye put out” portrays the idea that most living things are unable to recognize the beauty of sight until they lose it. The speaker reflects the true beauty of the world when she says “The Motions of the Dipping Birds-/ The Morning’s Amber Road-/ For mine-/ to look at when I liked-/ The News would strike me dead-” (14-17). This demonstrates the image of nature that the speaker “looks at” but actually “sees” the beauty of sight. Dickinson conveys the idea that one’s vision from

For Dickinson, sight is the most valuable sense that allowed her to see the world and act based upon whatever situations were thrown at her. In her poems, it seems that “darkness” would be a metaphor for the uncertainty, subsequently allowing “sight” to be a metaphor for how we tend to react to this uncertainty. Her two poems, “We grow accustomed to the Dark” and “Before I got my eye put out” seem to share the same representation and message that sight isn’t only a physical sense, but more importantly it’s the way our minds can adjust to see problematic situations with a different outlook.

After reading these two poems by Emily Dickinson, each definitely have their own grasp on sight. Both have a unique way of interpreting this concept. The tone and writing style of the speaker did help answer the question “What is the speaker really saying about sight?” Therefore when deconstructing a poem, it's essential to pay attention to detail and find the true meaning Dickinson was talking about and in this case that was sight.

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

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

In “We Grow Accustomed To The Dark” Dickinson starts off the poem with “We grow accustomed to the dark//When light is put away” right off the bat she mentions how you get comfortable with the dark or depression when the light or happiness is put away. In the second stanza of her poem, she says “We uncertain step//For newness of the night” by this she’s saying how our first few moments are uncertain but eventually a step will be taken and that’s how we learn the dark. “Then – fit our Vision to the Dark –” In this quote Dickinson says that we will fit our eyes to grow accustomed to the dark, but what she really means is that we’ll mentally grow used to that bad state of mind, our minds will adapt and once it does it’ll no longer be affected by it. She then says “And meet the Road – erect –” After adjusting to see in the dark and not in the light, walk the road with your back

Emily Dickinson , a private American poet , whose poems made a lot of metaphorical references had her poems exposed by her younger sister right after she died. As a child Dickinson lived most of her life in isolation which gave her time to write a lot of things like letters and poems like “Before I Got My Eye Put Out” and “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark”. Most of her poems aren't literal. They are written in metaphorical ways to make you think. Like her poem “Before I Got My Eye Put Out” , I think this poem is referring to how she wanted to explore the world , but later realized that she would be safer inside where there was shelter and protection. In her poem “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” I think she refers to how she lost somebody that she was close to , and the problem she encountered along the way as they were gone. Both of these poems are alike in a way that they both talk about losing or giving up on something. In “Before I Got My Eye Put Put Out” the speaker reacts to the loss by giving up and not trying anymore. I think speaker in “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” would react differently and actually try to explore the world and go on an adventure.

(14, 18). During this poem, Dickinson wants us to simply see her version of a person's trip during death. The imagery is supposed to lead us into seeing what the author is describing.

While much of Emily Dickinson's poetry has been described as sad or morose, the poetess did use humor and irony in many of her poems. This essay will address the humor and/ or irony found in five of Dickinson's poems: "Faith" is a Fine Invention, I'm Nobody! Who are you?, Some keep the Sabbath Going to Church and Success Is Counted Sweetest. The attempt will be made to show how Dickinson used humor and / or irony for the dual purposes of comic relief and to stress an idea or conclusion about her life and environment expressed by the poetess in the respective poem. The most humorous or ironic are some of the shorter poems, such as the four lined stanzas of "Faith" is a Fine Invention and

Emily Dickinson a modern romantic writer, whose poems considered imaginative and natural, but also dark as she uses death as the main theme many times in her writings. She made the death look natural and painless since she wanted the reader to look for what after death and not be stuck in that single moment. In her poems imagination play a big role as it sets the ground for everything to unfold in a magical way. The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. She turned increasingly to this style that came to define her writing. The poems are rich in aphorism and dense