Compare And Contrast Untitled And Acquainted With The Night

The poems Untitled by Emily Dickinson and Acquainted With The Night by Robert Frost both deal with the themes of darkness and night. While on the surface they seem similar, they have very different meanings, which are made clear through devices such as diction, imagery, symbolism and irony. Robert Frost’s poem uses darkness as a metaphor for depression, while Dickinson uses the same symbol to mean ignorance.
Both poems are told from a first-person perspective. However, Dickinson favors the pronoun “we” while Frost uses “I” almost to the point of excess. 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.
To Dickinson, darkness seems to represent the unknown. The focus of this poem is people trying to find their way in the dark, where nothing can be foreseen. Sight is a prevalent theme in Untitled, achieved through words like

Images of rain invoke the idea of tears, as does the phrase “an interrupted cry.” It is dark in the poem not only because it is night but also because the speaker has “outwalked the furthest city light.” The speaker is engulfed by their overwhelming sadness, symbolized by the dark night in which they walk, and they have turned away from the light --the happiness-- of the city. It is bitterly ironic that, even in the city, Frost’s speaker is utterly alone. They even hear and see other people, yet they know that everyone else is totally disconnected from their solitary