We Grow Accustomed To The Night Emily Dickinson Analysis

Night and the darkness associated with it often symbolize an end or the lack of a clear vision. However, with an ending may also come peace or a new beginning. Darkness hides some things while exemplifying others. Each person must examine his own relationship with darkness to discover how to push on through night towards day. Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson contrast both the fear and the calmness that night offers in their poems “Acquainted with the Night” and “We grow accustomed to the Dark” through the employment of varying tones, vivid imagery, and sentence structure. Dickinson begins to explore darkness through tone. She writes of the “newness of the night,” initially offering a hopeful tone (6). The speaker goes on to describe the largeness of “Darkness,” solidifying the nature of hope, but also creating some anxiety that being small can bring-almost as though one is out of place (9).

Dickinson writes about the light of day leaving and how “the Neighbor holds the Lamp” in a bittersweet and sentimental manner (3). As the speaker goes into the night, he describes his eyes adjusting to meet and welcome the darkness (7). The sky is vacant, revealing the total darkness of the night, as “not a Moon disclose a sign--/Or Star--come out--within--” (11-12). The people eventually “learn to see,” not only in the darkness of night, but also in the figurative darkness of life (16). Frost continues on, depicting his multiple journeys, those of being in the rain and walking in the city (2-4). The speaker expresses the “saddest city lane,” creating an image of darkness and vacancy (4). The “interrupted cry” covers the city, just as a loud cry on a silent night may do (8-9). Finally, Frost describes the “luminary Clock against the sky,” depicting the moon as an ever-moving object that can be both helpful and harmful (12). Both poets include imagery to develop their overall