Robert Frost’s Poetry Essay Example

with the night," the restless walker “have outwalked the furthest city light” and “looked down the saddest city lane” (Frost). He seems to have walked the city far and wide trying to find something or somebody that would sooth his restless mind and soul. His searches for the way out of his depression seem endless and exhausting, just like the depression itself, alluding to Frost’s lost peace of mind that can be connected to the tragic events in his life.

As the literary critic Wiiliam Pritchard notes in his book dedicated to Frost’ s life and works, “The death of Frost’s favorite child, Marjorie, called up from him a response both desolate and magnificent; here was an example, in a pure form, of tragedy – something terrible happening with nobody to blame” (Pritchard 213). Frost uses the metaphor of "walking" and its derivatives many times throughout the poem, that leaves the reader with a feeling that the walking of the main character never stops.

The alliteration of "st" sounds, as well as just the sound "s", creates the sound of shoe shuffling, which lends realism to the image of the man walking through empty streets at night. Through walking, the main character is distancing himself from civilization, from socialization, reflecting the author’s state of mind. The third theme, that both of the poems share, is the theme of loneliness. Both characters are pictured alone with their own sad thoughts in deserted places, even though the reader always gets a feeling of someone else’s presence.

Thus, the night walker in “Acquainted with the night” meets the watchmen but drops his eyes, “unwilling to

explain”, and remains lonely (Frost). He then hears an “interrupted cry” that “came over houses from another street,” but sadly it is not addressed to him, which one more time defines this suffocating feeling of a total loneliness that the reader gets, reading the poem (Frost). As Donald Greiner accurately observed in his critical essay, “Aquainted with the night” illustrates “how outer loneliness is a metaphor for inner despair” (? . The main character in "Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening”, even though accompanied with his four-legged travel fellow, is still alone with his reflections. The loneliness of the speaker is defined by creating an image of almost absolute silence: "The only other sound’s the sweep of easy wind and downy flake" (Frost). The presence of feeling of forlornness and terrifying loneliness in Frost’s poems can be explained by facts of his biography: the poet lost the majority of his family members by tragic circumstances, mentioned above.

As one of the critics describes this tragic for the poet time of life, “Here was an example, in a pure form, of tragedy – something terrible happening with nobody to blame” (? ). The reader can tell how deep Frost’s suffers were by the mood that these two poems carry. He did not have his close family members anymore to share his pain of loss with, and that only worsened his depression. After the conducted research of “Acquainted with the night” and “Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening”, one can tell that the two great poems are filled with pain, depressive feelings, and unbearable anguish.

Poems always reflect their author’s internal

world, and these two poems are no exception. Robert Frost had to go through the untimely deaths of his parents, son, and two daughters by the time the poems were created. The poet starts seeing himself as a person who is doomed for such an unhappy life, which is seen in these poems as the author uses themes of night, loneliness, and isolation. Having such a terrible life experience, the poet is losing his hope for the better future. And indeed, after 6 years of the date of composing “Acquainted with the night”, he looses his child, Marjorie, in 1934 (Pritchard 213).

The tragedies seem to never end: “The two further deaths he lived through over the next six years … could not similarly be dealt with as instances of nature operating without collusion from the human survivor. The guilty conscience provoked in a parent by an off-spring’s suicide is wholly imaginable; but the guilty agony provoked in Frost by his wife’s death is deeper and harder to fathom” (Pitchard 213). There can be no doubt that such tragic life circumstances not only influence the mood of Frost’s “Acquainted with the night” and “Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening”, but also foreshadow Frost’s later poems’ dark undertones.