We Grow Accustomed To The Dark And Acquainted With The Night Analysis
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Although Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost discuss the hardships cescribed by the darkness in their poems "We grow accustomed to the dark" and "Acquainted With the Night", their point of view, structure, and imagery reinforce the differences between the two poems. While Frost's poem contains a far more desolate meaning, Dickinson's poem suggests uncertainty and change, and the difficulties that accompany them. The darkness Frost describes connotes loneliness and even sorrow. Although the speaker is just outside the city, he is isolated from everything around him. By "outwalk[ing] the furthest city light" and "dropp[ing] [his] eyes" to the "watchman", the speaker travels beyond any form of human contact. Indeed, the only one Frost's speaker becomes "acquainted with" is the night itself. The "luminary clock", or the moon, reveals its ambivalence when the speaker observes that the time was "neither wrong nor right". The moon is also symbolic of a clock, perhaps timing the speaker's isolation, of which he is ashamed. The dreary image of "[sad] city [lanes]" invokes a sense of depression regarding the speaker's state of mind. Frost's repetition of "I have" sets the monotonous rhythm, as well as the repetition of "I have been one acquainted with the night". Haunted by the…show more content… Frost uses even, uniform lines to continue the same feeling of dreariness in his poem. Frosts highly structured format shows how the speaker is more familiar with the dark, for it has been with him for a long time. In Dickinson's poem, however, her use of free verse represents the instability people experience when they struggle through the darkness. In this way, Dickinson describes how the onset of darkness can come suddenly and without warning; however, it is usually short-term. On the other hand, Frost's structure symbolizes how the darkness is like a gradual depression that his speaker has fallen into long