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We Grow Accustomed To The Dark 'And Acquainted With The Night'

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It's always darkest before the dawn. Darkness and night are typically used in writing to create a negative mood in the writing. In the poems “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” by Emily Dickinson and “Acquainted with the night” by Robert Frost both deal with the imagery of darkness and night; and both poems use this to create a negative tone. However the meaning behind both poems are starkly different as one. In both of these poems the authors use the similar imagery. Their imagery is used to set a negative tone in both poems. In “Acquainted with the Night” Frost writes things like “I have looked down the saddest city lane.”, and “When far away an interrupted cry/ Came over houses from another street,”, these lines used to create an eerie mood and a negative tone throughout the poem. Likewise, in “We grow accustomed to the Dark” Dickinson has written “And so of larger-- Darknesses--/ Those Evenings of the Brain--”, this imagery is used the same as in Frost to depict a setting and from a atmosphere …show more content…

“A Moment -- We uncertain step/ For newness of the night”. While the term night is used here it is really just a placeholder of something new, or different. In the beginning it will be tough and uneasy, but once you learn you will be able to do whatever it is in life that was once hard. “But as they learn to see--/ Either the Darkness alters--/ Or something in the sight/ Adjust itself to Midnight”, here Dickinson shows how in life people adapt and learn to their situations. This poem portrays that in life you will always go through rough times, and at some points feel hopeless and at a loss. But, it finishes with a lightening of the night a revival of hope and Dickinson I think is trying to reason out why suicide in life is never the option because no matter how dark the night may seem you can grow to it and learn how to deal with the problems life

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In the beginning, the author expresses how time is never ending. The author uses precise diction to describe nightfall in which can be inferred as death. He uses “plane of light”, “sunset”, “shadow”, “last”, and “the hawk comes” in which he expresses that time will not stop even for death. Night is darkness, in which death will fall upon.

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In this line Frost is talking about the transition from dawn to day. Like the other lines of Frost’s poems there is a more deeper meaning to it. What Frost is talking about in this line is how short each day is, and how quickly they pass. In this line Frost is talking about how quickly time goes by, and why it’s important to hold onto your memories. He is also saying how you should cherish each day and live life to fullest.

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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

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"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas subjects defiance against accepting death quietly. It talks about different ways on how men approach death in old age and encourage people to struggle to live until the last breath. Thomas uses figurative language to give deeper meanings to his work. Although the basic theme of this work is about death and old age, by using different figurative language such as metaphor and simile, it enables the reader to think more and see another theme like time is ticking, and before you know it, you may be on your deathbed. But since it was written during the dying moment of his father, Thomas might be thinking of death, and plea to him to defy it and rage against the dying light.

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779 Words | 4 Pages

In both poems “Before I Got My Eye Put Out” and “ We Grow Accustomed To the Dark” by Emily Dickinson. She talks about adjusting and change. The former poem is about recollecting memories of one 's vision before the loss of sight the and the dramatic change experienced . In the latter poem, Ms. Dickinson speaks about how things are going to always adjust and how we get used to the darkness. The speaker in ‘We grow accustomed to the dark’ would react to losing one’s sight the same as the speaker in ‘Before i got my eye put out’.

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The speaker also talks about how he encountered a watchman but did not acknowledge the man simply so he wouldn’t have to explain why he is walking. He then talks about how he heard someone calling from a different street so he stopped walking thinking it was for him. He then glairs up to see a clock, but he was not pleased by the time. Lastly he then repeats the first line stating he is now “Acquainted with the night”.

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529 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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There are literary devices used that can be seen in most of the lines or stanzas. The use of metaphor can already be seen in the first line of the first stanza. " Out of the night that covers me," wherein the "night" the dreariest juncture of the day and so the author compared it to sorrow. The night symbolizes the hindrance or barrier to the person which makes him suffer.

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In the poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” the poet, Dylan Thomas, uses metaphors and repetition as an outlet to urge all men to resist and rage against death by living brightly until the inevitable end of their life. In describing human life, rather than explicitly using the words ‘life’ and ‘death’, Thomas uses light and dark metaphorically to describe these different stages of life. Thomas instructs that at the end of one’s life, their “Old age should burn and rave at close of day” as well as to “rage against the dying of the light” (Thomas 2-3). At the close of day, as one can assume, the sun will start to set and the sky will start to dim, or light will start to die. Thomas uses this daily process as a metaphor by describing the process of life’s approaching demise as ‘dying light,’ as well as describing life as ‘light’ and ‘brightness.’

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888 Words | 4 Pages

Firstly, symbolism helps to portray the struggle to survive in this poem. When Thomas says “Do not go gentle into that good night,” this means to not give up so easily and let death overcome you. This is shown in the quote as “Do not go gentle” is where he says to not fade away slowly, but to persevere, and the second part of the quotation “into that good night” symbolizes death as the night is dark,

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Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California on March 26, 1874 (Stern). Frost’s upbringing and the way he felt throughout his life were demonstrated as he “portrayed [his] homesickness and painful loneliness” (Kidd 1). The connection Frost had with the common man is due in large part to the fact he was a farmer himself and that was displayed through various poems throughout his life (Stern 1). The Poem “Acquainted with the night” goes through a melancholy acceptance of something that is sad and difficult to bear. Frost’s poem “Acquainted with the night” expresses the theme of isolation while also setting a tone of loneliness, depression, and acceptance of life.

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952 Words | 4 Pages

However, he fears that if he enters the darkness, he will not be able to fulfil what he needs to in life. This has to do with snow because the speaker just wants to watch the snow when he stops to ponder if he should go into the dark. The metaphorical explanation of this poem is the man observing the snow is not entirely sure if he is ready to die yet. The poem uses the line “and miles to go before I sleep” as a way to describe that. He is pondering this while he and his horse are stopped and admiring the snow (Plot Summary: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy

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1807 Words | 8 Pages

As Frost writes, “I have been acquainted with the night. / I have walked out in rain – and back in rain. / I have outwalked the furthest city light” (1-3). He establishes that he has delved deeply into depression multiple times and the tumultuous behaviors that affect his surroundings. Frost uses the setting of night early on in his poem as a symbol for abjection and the feeling of loneliness one could endure rather than solely as a setting.

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784 Words | 4 Pages

In the poem there is another sentence “ And life steps almost straight” (line 20) after living in the dark people are getting comfortable and familiar to the dark people, than they see the light, because people does not feel uncomfortable, depressed feeling, and gets more mature. After being in dark people grow up, they are going on without the silliness, the childish, and get more mature and serious toward people, things, thinking, and places. This other poem by Emily Dickinson “Before I got my eye put out” tells that people rely on their eye their sight to much, so they lose their imagination and something what people sees can not always be the truth. In the poem Dickinson says “Before I got my eye put out …...other creatures, that have eyes and know no other way.” (line1-4) it is telling people that before lose of your eyes, your sight, everyone was the same they might not know what are they doing and not knowing their way to go.

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936 Words | 4 Pages

The different descriptions of the night sky provides a step closer to the speaker’s final destination. Tennyson begins the poem by describing the “sunset and evening star”(Line 1). This is his first use of night imagery that symbolizes the first step towards approaching death. The night is winding down slowly when the sun sets, just as the speaker’s life is slowly starting to come to an end. In the third stanza, Tennyson uses the word “twilight”(Line 9) to provide another description of the sky as the speaker’s impending death.

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