Barbara Benjamin
4 May 1994
Essay: "Acquainted With the Night" by
Robert Frost
Sometimes a poem can have an immediate
hold on us although we're not sure why. Though it sounds contradictory, a powerful
vagueness, like a heavy mist, engulfs us when we read or hear the words. This is the feeling I had the first time I
read Robert Frost's "Acquainted With the
Night." In fact, I
was so captured by the poem that I memorized it. However, I never took the time to formally analyzed it to understand what makes it so powerful. So, I've decided to
thoroughly immerse myself in it so I can learn why I'm drawn so strongly to it,
as are many other people.
"Acquainted With the Night" is one of
Frost's most loved poems.
A good starting place when analyzing a poem
is to search for literal meanings. The
literal subject matter of this poem seems obvious and clear, at least on the surface.
The following are some of the literal meanings that, for simplicity's sake,
I've listed in the order they appear line-by-line.
I use a masculine pronoun when referring to the
speaker because it feels to me that the speaker is a man.
* The speaker takes long
walks alone late at night.
* His walks have also been in the rain.
* He has walked
to and beyond the edges of town, beyond the city lights.
* He has seen the
sad parts of town; perhaps the poor, ghetto areas.
* He has passed
a watchman, or a foot patrolman, during his walks.
* He has averted
his eyes when passing the watchman, not wanting to explain something to him.
* He has stopped
to listen when he's heard, in the distance, someone cry out.
* He can see an illuminated clock face
high on a tower somewhere in the distance.
So, the poem literally is
of a man talking about his walks late at night.
As Laurence Perrine says, "This poem is not the account of one walk;
it is the record of many walks" (50), or the composite
of many walks at night. The tone and the
lack of details tell us that there is a deeper meaning.
If the poem were to be taken literally, there would be more details and explanations.
Without them, the poem would hold little interest.
Thus, the night here is used as a symbol.
The tone of the poem has a somber, sad
quality and a strong element of fear.
These qualities fit with the symbolic meaning of "night." Conventionally, night is a symbol used to
suggest darkness of the mind or soul. So, on a deeper level, the speaker is saying that he is
acquainted with an internal darkness of some kind.
The speaker does not
give details of his own experiences and why he has been acquainted with darkness.
However, the darkness in this poem evokes many images, such as sorrow,
pain, loss, loneliness, alienation, death, grief, heartbreak, insanity, and terror.
Any or all of these could be part of his internal darkness.
The appearance of the watchman, or patrolman,
adds a sense of anxiety. Obviously then,
there is an element of danger to walk the dark streets
of this city. To know that the speaker
is out walking late at night produces a chill and a shiver of fear.
This image certainly suggests that these night walks are anything but peaceful
and calming. This image, then, tells the reader that part
of the speaker's experience is one of fear and anxiety. "Fear is an emotion which appears in different
forms throughout Frost's work. He
sees it as a dominant human feeling and one of the chief factors governing the
universe" (Jennings, p 173).
The speaker says he has
looked down the "saddest" city lane (line 4). To say "saddest" is to state the maximum.
So, his experience goes beyond mere sadness.
Looking down the saddest city lane gives a sense of looking directly into
the dark depths of sadness. The "saddest"
city lane, or the deepest depths of sadness, suggests a profound loss of some
kind, perhaps the death of a child or a lover. Thus, his sadness has probably come from the
pain experienced
by death or heartbreak.
That the speaker has walked "out in
rain" and "back in rain" (line 2) says he has
probably endured long periods of darkness. Rain
accentuates the dismal quality of the dark nights and deepens its meaning.
The phrase "out in rain---and back in rain" suggests that he
perhaps found it difficult to cope with or to find answers during his darkness. Coming "back in rain" also indicates
that during his long walk, or searching, the situation probably did not change, nor did he find answers. "To read [Frost's] poems as they confront
basic human troubles . . . can be unnerving---they offer neither security nor
solace" (Howe).
Further evidence of this
is seen in the comment, "And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain" (line 6). Is he unwilling to explain his fears or his
sorrows? Because he has
not mentioned his dark experiences, this comment seems to say that he is
unwilling to explain them to the reader. Perhaps
this is because he us unable to or that there are no answers.
"Outwalk[ing] the furthest city light" (line 3) seems also to
express the depth of his darkness. To
walk beyond the lights is to be beyond the perimeter of the city. It gives the feeling of being lost, or
perhaps of being on the brink of insanity.
Inherent in the image is also a suicidal element. Being out in the dark beyond the lights is to
be outside of the rest of humanity. Such
a feeling of alienation usually causes a person to question the continuation of
his life.
Feelings of loneliness and alienation are
very strong in this poem. The speaker
takes walks alone at night---in the darkness.
Being in the darkness alone gives the feeling of disconnectedness. So, it seems that he
has been disconnected from humanity at some time in his life, which is
suggested in line 3, "outwalked the furthest
city light." This adds to the idea
of a suicidal tendency. Living in a
city, especially a large city, can in itself be
alienating. The paradox of living in a
city is that the larger the city---the more people there are---the more
alienated the individual becomes from others.
Symbolically, walking the city streets alone at night makes him appear
estranged from others.
There is also a feeling of alienation
in line 10. The person who cries out does
not call him back or say goodbye. If emphasis is placed
on the word "me," ("but not to call ME back or say good-by"),
it could infer that no one is in his life to call out for him, and he expresses
a desire to be with someone. He
is so alone in the world that there is no one to call to him, to need him,
or to want him. But
because this cry is not to him, the feeling of loneliness and alienation from
others would seem even more pointed.
There could be a second layer of meaning
to this same stanza. He stops "the
sound of feet" to listen to the "interrupted cry" far away. The image of the cry is eerie, a sound of distress.
Perhaps he is listening to his own inner voices, crying out and searching
to make sense of his world. Given the overall fearful, lonely, and sad tone
of the poem, this seems a plausible explanation. But because the voice does not call him back
or say goodbye, it seems that he doesn't find answers for which he searches.
The speaker's mention of the luminary clock
against the sky at an unearthly height has stirred considerable debate as to the
actually meaning. The debate primarily
centers around whether the speaker is talking about a
real clock or about something cosmic, such as the moon or stars.
I feel that the clock is real, which would be
consistent with the rest of the poem.
However, whether the clock is real or not
does not change the deeper symbolic meaning. As Robert Fleissner
says, "the effect of an illuminated tower clock against a pitch-black sky
. . . was the secondary, not the primary meaning." The speaker is a man who has been deeply troubled
and who is trying to make sense out of his internal darkness. Except in one brief instance, the speaker is
noncommittal and makes no value judgments. The
only time he does is in line 4, "I have looked down the saddest city
lane." But
even here, the reader is not sure why it's sad.
The clock, too, makes no value judgments on the time. It tells the time, but proclaims that the time
is neither wrong nor right.
The concept of wrong and right are human
attributes. The darknesses
in our lives merely happen---they are products of earthly (human) and unearthly
(universal) forces. It is the human act
that is wrong or right, not time, nor anything unearthly. Man's conception of wrong or right is everything.
Because the time is neither wrong not right, the
speaker is saying that there is no divine plan or divine intervention. Rather, things merely happen. There is no wrong nor
right time to be here. It just is. The matter-of-fact tone of the comment about
time, as well as the matter-of-fact tone and the lack of judgment throughout the
poem, suggests that the speaker accepts this assessment of life. He may be acquainted with darkness, but he realizes too that to live is to know darkness. It is inescapable. But to this, too, he
gives no value judgment. Randall Jarrell
tells us that Frost's "best known poems start with a flat and terrible reproduction
of the evil in the world and end by saying: It's so; and there's nothing you can
do about it" (110).
The popularity of this poem lies in its
elusiveness. There are no details of the
speaker's darkness, but many emotions are brought out
in the reader by the various images. The
reader, then, puts into the poem his own dark experiences and relates to those
emotions evoked. No one escapes some
kind of sadness, fear, or loneliness in their
lives. It's all
a matter of degree, but each person's darkness is just that---darkness---just
as the night is dark. Each person feels
the pain of their own darkness, as others feel their own. One cannot pass a value judgment on another's
pain.
This poem is an extended metaphor of all
of the elements of man's darkness. It subliminally
evokes fears, loneliness, and sadness in even the most casual reader who may not
understand the symbolic values. Nearly anyone can relate to the imageries in
this poem. The lack of judgmental value
lets the reader see himself in the poem and lets him feel to the degree of his
own experiences. The reader does not have to try to relate to the degree of the speaker's
experiences. The speaker's sadness IS
the reader's sadness; the speaker's fear IS the reader's fear; and the
speaker's loneliness IS the reader's loneliness. This mirror of vagueness is why this poem is
one of Frost's most loved poems; it is a mirror of the reader's experiences.
This is also why it is one of Frost's best poems.
"At his best, [Frost] is a poet of elusiveness, wit, and modesty.
. . . "Acquainted With
the Night" [is] among his finest [poems]" (170).
Works
Cited
Fleissner, Robert
F. "Frost's 'Aquainted
With the Night.' The Explicator Vol
37: 12-13.
Howe,
Jarrell,
Randall. In
his Poetry and the Age. Knopf-Vintage
1953. Contemporary
Literary Criticism Vol 1, 1973: 109-110.