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Acquainted With The Night Poem Analysis

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Robert Frost, a great American poet once said, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” A life of a person will end, and no matter how hard people try, nothing with life can control time. Therefore, no people can master life. However unattainable the aspect of governing time is, several authors have attempted to give the world lessons that help each person to use the time life does give. In the poem “Acquainted with the Night”, Robert Frost describes being alone in life, while Tim McGraw expresses the celebration of living life to the fullest in his song “Live Like You Were Dying”.
In the poem “Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost, metaphors, parallel structure, and alliteration begin to tell a story of loneliness. Frost starts the poem with, “I have been one acquainted with …show more content…

Within the first stanza, a man learns about the rest of his life, “I spent most of the next days/Looking at the x-rays/Talkin’ ‘bout the options/And talkin’ ‘bout sweet time” (McGraw 1). In this stanza, the audience learns that a man is dying and will only have a certain amount of time left. When he says “looking at the x-rays”, an image of a man sitting on a couch looking up at several x-rays of his own body are easy to see. Using this imagery brings the character to life in not only the imagination, but gives a real quality to the story told. Fresh, engaging and beautiful language is seen in the lines, “Talkin’ ‘bout the options/And talkin’ ‘bout sweet time” as it is refreshing to hear, it also gives some background and culture to the person saying it. While looking at x-rays and talking about different choices, the man does not accept defeat. Overpowering the barriers, he asks for help and options to guide his path. Although his time is shorter on Earth, the man connects strongly with the theme as he begins to overcome his limitations in

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The title of the poem seems a little bit strange because of the word “Acquainted”. Anyone can say he or she is acquainted with the night because everyone has the night for half of one’s lifetime. By using the word “Acquainted” , Frost tells readers that the narrator

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This creates in the former a sense of community and in the latter a sense of isolation. Isolation is a prevalent theme in Acquainted With The Night. Much of the imagery in that poem - the speaker walking past the watchman with his head down, the moon all alone in the sky- serves to reinforce this sense of isolation. To Frost, the night symbolizes loneliness. Conversely, Dickinson’s poem, through diction such as “we,” and “our,” gives the impression that all of humanity is in the darkness together.

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