Acquainted With The Night

Forever One: A Man and the Night Nighttime can only mean that a storm is brewing. Whether it be a hurricane making landfall the next morning, or a crime about to unfold, one can be sure that an explosion of major consequences will take place. Or maybe a man is just wallowing in his sadness, as illustrated in Robert Frost’s poem, “Acquainted with the Night”. Frost uses negative, cloudy, dark imagery and universal symbols of sadness to describe the unsettled mind and heart of the speaker. Firstly, Frost establishes the principle of the darkness inside of the speaker, using the imagery of the first two stanzas. For example, Frost links the speaker to the night for the remainder of the poem through the very first line, “I have been one acquainted with the night.” In just three measly lines, the speaker is already known by the reader as a
He drops his head to hide his face, unwilling to tell the policeman how ashamed he is to be in his state. Another example of the use of diction is in stanza 3, when the speaker “stood still and stopped the sound of feet.” The poem takes place in a large city, where there are normally massive crowds of people all around, and the tapping of feet never stops. As such, the empty streets are used as a symbol of the man’s state, and also, they exaggerate the empty void in the speaker’s soul. The speaker has a lack of companionship in his life, adding to the insurmountably bad situation that he is in. In stanza 3, lines 2-3, the speaker us observant of a cry originating from another street, as if longing for any sort of partner or acquaintance, someone to share his story with. Unfortunately, the dream dies, and no one is there to pull the man out of his everlasting melancholy. Symbolism is once again a key in portraying the man’s situation, as the calls were not meant to get his attention, they were distant, just like any hope of happiness for the