Acquainted with the Night
- Created by: Harleym7000
- Created on: 31-03-18 22:16
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- Acquainted with the Night
- In form Frost’s poem is a terza rima sonnet. The interlocking nature of the terza rima
rhyme scheme generates a propulsion from tercet to tercet which is halted by the
final couplet.
- In Frost’s poem the fourteenth and final line merely repeats the first,
with the ending re-stating the beginning. This provides a perfectly designed vehicle for
Frost’s subject matter – a solitary nocturnal walker with no destination in view and no
apparent purpose to his walking.
- The city nightscape provides a suitable setting for Frost’s exploration of his theme, which may be regarded as loneliness, or depression, or the experience of the outsider
- In Frost’s poem the fourteenth and final line merely repeats the first,
with the ending re-stating the beginning. This provides a perfectly designed vehicle for
Frost’s subject matter – a solitary nocturnal walker with no destination in view and no
apparent purpose to his walking.
- Each of the seven sentences begins with the pronoun “I”. (Only one of these sentences
extends beyond two lines, so only one is bound together by a rhyme, which may
suggest an inability on the part of the speaker to integrate the total experience.)
- This repetition of the pronoun emphasises the aloneness of the speaker in the night. The only other character encountered, the city watchman receives no greeting, only silence and a dropped gaze. Not even the communication of eye-contact takes place.
- The use of the dash in the punctuation of the second sentence
“I have walked out in the rain – and back in rain”
indicates a break in the sentence, but also a strong resumption which cancels the
movement out, suggesting the lack of purpose.
- Frost’s use of superlatives in his description of the nightscape suggests that his
speaker has either exhausted or is untouched by the resources of the city:
“I have outwalked the furthest city light
I have looked down the saddest city lane.”
- If the city can be a symbol of man’s ability to co-operate and live communally, this
night-walker is alienated from all such human activity.
- His reaction to a human cry
(of suffering? of appeal?) is to stop, but the reaction goes no further, certainly not
as far as to establish contact with another.
- The cry is “interrupted”, it came from “over houses”, from “another street” – all phrases which distance it and lessen its immediacy to the walker, who hears but does not respond. It is not meant for him.
- His reaction to a human cry
(of suffering? of appeal?) is to stop, but the reaction goes no further, certainly not
as far as to establish contact with another.
- If the city can be a symbol of man’s ability to co-operate and live communally, this
night-walker is alienated from all such human activity.
- Frost’s use of superlatives in his description of the nightscape suggests that his
speaker has either exhausted or is untouched by the resources of the city:
“I have outwalked the furthest city light
I have looked down the saddest city lane.”
- The
most striking presentation of the speaker’s alienation comes towards the end of the
poem in the image of the clock:
“And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.”
- This may be a public clock with an illuminated face, or it may be the moon. The force of the image is that it “proclaims” that time, the regulator of the city and of human
affairs generally, is without meaning for the speaker.
- The sonnet provides a chilling account of alienation without hope of alleviation, and it is fitting that it ends with the word “night”. It takes its place with other terrifying poems such as Design* as indicators of the dark side of Frost’s psyche.
- This may be a public clock with an illuminated face, or it may be the moon. The force of the image is that it “proclaims” that time, the regulator of the city and of human
affairs generally, is without meaning for the speaker.
- In form Frost’s poem is a terza rima sonnet. The interlocking nature of the terza rima
rhyme scheme generates a propulsion from tercet to tercet which is halted by the
final couplet.
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