Acquainted with the Night written by Robert Frost is a poem, in first person that describes the writer roaming the streets at night. Robert Frost himself is known for battling the illness of depression and has not found comfort in it. Analyzing the poem, with the theme of depression the writer sets a tone of loneliness, acceptance, and melancholy, all in one. There is no indication of an addressee and shows many forms of poetic terms and elements used in this poem.
The poem itself is a tercet format, in terms of rhyme scheme the last word of every other line rhymes, with a pattern of ABA CDC DAD AA. This way of writing keeps the attention of the reader and the poem is comprised of 14 stanzas and 7 sentences.
The initial tone the reader receives from Acquainted with night by Robert Frost is loneliness, sadness and empathy for the writer. Frost emphasizes this by using the first-person term “I” anaphorically, in the beginning of the first 5 sentences which accentuates the point of how he is feeling isolated. The repetitious nature of that word makes a fine point to the reader. Another way this is visible is “when far away an interrupted cry came over the house from another street, but not to call me back or say good
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(ll. 3-4) The inability to make eye contact with the watchman indicates that his depression makes him unable to have normal human interaction. It is his absents of self-assurance that drives him to do so. The writer employs this unique stanza “I walked out in the rain – and back in rain” (l. 2) The reader sees this metaphor as a repetitive motion with no end. No one voluntarily walks through the rain unless they have too. While people are associate the day with liveliness and being social, the narrator is only acquainted with the night, and can’t find anything in common with those around