English Essay: Analyzing Robert Frost's 'Acquainted with the Night'

This essay provides an in-depth analysis of Robert Frost's poem "Acquainted with the Night." It delves into the poet's personal struggles with loneliness and depression, which heavily influenced his work. The essay examines the poem's tone, diction, and theme, highlighting the use of literary devices such as repetition, symbolism, and alliteration. It explores the poet's use of "Terza Rima" structure and how it contributes to the poem's melancholic tone. The analysis covers the poem's exploration of darkness, sorrow, and the human experience, connecting it to Frost's life experiences. The essay also provides a detailed explanation of the poem's meaning, focusing on the poet's familiarity with the night, his exploration of the city, and his ability to find beauty in loneliness. This essay offers insights into the poem's themes of sadness, melancholy, and the impact of depression and isolation on an individual's life.

Running head: ENGLISH
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Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Robert Frost: Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost was a renowned poet in the 18th and 19th century, most of his poems and
written stanzas depicted the standard of rural life. He generally proclaimed sorrow and
melancholy that surrounds human life, the poet himself was struggling in his personal life, which
was reflected in his poems. Winner of four Pulitzer prizes, majority of his writings were
critically acclaimed for constant exploration of loneliness and depression in a person’s life.
Therefore, the main thesis of essay is to understand the influence of a human choices and actions
to guide in making give good or bad decisions in his/ life (Spartan.ac.brocku.ca 2020). The tone,
diction and the theme will be explored vividly to understand the mentality of the poet, and
understand the meaning of his poem, which adheres to many human beings and their life.
(Spartan.ac.brocku.ca. 2020)
The poem “Acquainted with the night” explains the poet exploration through the night
road while he was strolling the night in sheer solidarity. In the poem, the author’s tone explains
that the night atmosphere is quiet and peaceful, but somehow resembles the atmosphere of a
cemetery portraying the loneliness lingering in poet life (Su 2016). Acquaintance with the night,
specifically mentions his familiarity with darkness, representing a pun, where every human being
is acquainted with night, but rare people, people who have spent longer time in night and
darkness, understand darkness in life. Therefore, to explore the actual tone of the poem, the first
stanza presents loneliness, second stanza depicting sorrow, which ends in humiliation in the last
Stanza. In case of Stanza four, the poem shows the hopefulness that every person should keep,
explaining the moon in the fifth stanza. The last stage comes in realization that every obstacles,
loneliness, sorrow must be overcome to live in life. This poem was critically acclaimed, because
of the it was aligned to the poet struggle in personal life, where he lost majority of his family

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members through depression, of death, making him alone. Although, he was strong enough to
survive through the tumultuous life and overcome the loneliness. The tone of the poem has well
aligned itself with “Terza Rima”, Terza Rima is a poem structure, which follows a synchronized
order of three, and presence of two outer lines, which has rhythmic pattern, and the inner three
lines has rhythmic alignment with the two outer lines (Figura, 2016). The tone of the poem was
consistent portrayal of sadness and melancholy by the poet, as the health history of the poet
suggests his continuous struggle with depression, for which he was more acquainted to darkness,
isolation and this is depicted by his frequent night strolls in the road.
The theme of the poem “Acquainted with the night” is surrounded with sorrow and
loneliness, which depicts the sad story of poet’s personal life. Further explaining thee guilt and
depression he was feeling. The literary devices that have been used are the repetition of words “I
have”, “ I have been one acquainted with the night ”, uses of symbolism throughout the poem, by
the use of personification line like “saddest city lane”, and use of Alliteration sentences like
“Stood still and stopped the sound” (Sayuthi 2019). Some line from the poem, clearly illustrated
the sadness and melancholy in the poem. Firstly, “I have been one acquainted with the night”,
this explained the author’s walk in the lonely night. Secondly, “I have walked out in rain—and
back in rain, in this line, he has explained his coming back and forth between darkness, and his
acquaintance with every corner of the road. Thirdly, “I have outwalked the furthest city light”,
explaining the author’s acquaintance with the dark lonely road, as he has seen the farthest point
of the road, and still he has experiences about the never-ending darkness of the road. Even
though, his love and adjustment to the loneliness and darkness has been quite evident, when he
explains that without the city lights the road looks quite and beautiful. Fourthly, “I have looked
down the saddest city lane”, this stanza, he is giving description to the readers about the

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melancholy and sadness depicted by the road, which keeps lingering inside the poet’s mind, and
he relates it with his life
In here, the diction of the poem will be explained, according to the given stanzas, which
will explore the author use of words in relation to making the poem more presentable (Canham
2018). On defining the first stanza, the word acquaintance are used in case of words like familiar
or being aware. Acquaintance is generally used when people knows some people but does not
have deep relationship with them. Therefore, the choice of this word depicts the knowing if
darkness by the author but he also proclaims the deep dislike for that darkness. The use of the
word “in rain”, depicted his loneliness and his struggle through depression. Walking beyond the
city light explains the author’s exploration to every corner of the world, but always being
acquainted with darkness, failing to find comfort. In the second stanza, Robert Frost has referred
the word “saddest”, which explains the distance the author has with other people, and the city
life’s inability to connect with the poet’s mentality.
Therefore, the description of tone, theme and diction has been clearly mentioned, to make
the readers understand his acquaintance with night, and his profound knowledge about darkness.
The theme of the poem is sadness, melancholy and constant depression, which is illustrated well
through this poem, as the poet himself has a life of struggle with his parent’s death at a very
tender age, and most of his children died before him along with his wife dying of cancer with
him. The poet had a lifelong issue of depression, which was hereditary from his mother, this all
made him isolated and refrain himself from people. In this poet, he explains that Depression and
Isolation, pushes a person to unhappiness and loneliness.

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References
Canham, H., 2018. Acquainted with the Night: psychoanalysis and the poetic imagination.
Routledge.
Figura, M., 2016, October. Terza Rima. In The Portable Poetry Workshop (p. 11). Macmillan
International Higher Education.
Sayuthi, M., 2019, August. Theme In Robert Frost Poems. In Seminar Nasional Sains dan
Teknologi Informasi (SENSASI) (Vol. 2, No. 1).
Spartan.ac.brocku.ca. 2020. [online] Available at:
<http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~dvivian/public_html/3F61%20docs/3F61%20poems.pdf>
[Accessed 7 April 2020].
Su, Y., 2016. Dark Energy in Robert Frost’s Poems. Theory and Practice in Language
Studies, 6(7), pp.1372-1376.