Human Anxiety In The Night

Man fears the darkness of night for the same reason he fears dying – because it is a place of uncertainty and within it lies the unknown. Not being able to anticipate occurrences and obstacles is often even more unnerving than being sure of them, and not being able to change the outcome. Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost explore this common source of human anxiety in the darkness and the night in their works: “We grow accustomed to the Dark” and “Acquainted with the Night.” In Frost’s poem he examines the temporary feelings of isolation that a person may feel in the darkness, while Dickinson uses the darkness to reflect an unnerving feeling of being perpetually lost at night. Despite the major differences between the two works, both poems, portray the night and the dark as an obstacle to man’s innermost insecurities.
For Dickinson, this obstacle is uncertainty or the inability to anticipate the outcome of the situation.
The speaker in “We grow accustomed to the Dark” observes the general behavior of man in the dark. The first line of the poem communicates the speaker’s attitude towards the behavior of people when faced by the obstacles of the dark, and then throughout the rest of the poem, the speaker examines the details of the night in order to show how someone may become accustomed to the dark. These details are mostly descriptions of people’s reactions to the dark. Dickinson uses vivid description to create images of the clumsiness of man when he is moving maneuvering through the dark. Dickinson uses phrases such as “we uncertain step” and “grope a little” to create a vivid image of the awkward and uncertain nature of people’s actions when first confronted with unfamiliar situations. These descriptions of clumsiness contrast with the descriptions in the last stanza in which Dickinson shows that man becomes adjusts to the night, and “steps almost straight” (line
20).
The speaker in Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night,” has a different attitude towards the night that the speaker in Dickinson’s “We grow accustomed to the Dark.” Although darkness is still an obstacle for man, the darkness is no longer an unfamiliar situation, but rather a metaphor for the speaker’s feelings of isolation when in the dark. Different from the speaker in Dickinson’s poem, the speaker in Frost only refers to his or her own experiences in the dark. Additionally, Frost uses much more visual imagery, describing the what the speaker sees rather than how the speaker acts in the dark. Throughout the poem, the speaker describes scenes that made him or her feel isolated and alone such as in lines four and five when he says that he has “looked down the saddest city lane” and “passed by the watchman on his beat.” In all the situations the speaker describes, the night was his only acquaintance, as foreshadowed by the title.
Both Dickinson and Frost address the night as an obstacle to the speaker and to man, but differ in the attitude in which they address the obstacle. Dickinson believes that man approaches the obstacle of night with much more confidence than Frost does, even though man is initially very intimidated by the dark, and thus very clumsy. Frost, however, uses the night to represent the difficult emotional experiences that the speaker has had in the night, looking back at the experiences with the attitude of a battered soldier. Despite the fear and uncertainty associated with the dark, through their respective works it is evident that neither poet believes that the obstacle is impossible to overcome.