the nature of the human, just as darkness, water,
light, moon, and sky are inseparable from the
external world. The persona must choose his action
in the moral conscience created by humanity.
The persona dubiously embraces the fact
that questions of right and wrong do not apply
to the universe. Morality is a human issue parti-
ally regulated by mythology, which is, among
other things, ‘‘the enforcement of moral order’’
(Campbell, Creative Mythology, 4). Morality
involves a collective imagination but ultimately
must be enacted by individuals.
In this way, the persona must choose his reac-
tion to a distant cry. Will he respond with the
amorality of the universe? No, it is impossible.
The word ‘‘choose’’ here is a key, because the per-
sona has emphasized what he has done and what
he still does. He emphasizes his actions: ‘‘walked’’
(Frost, 2), ‘‘outwalked’’ (2), ‘‘looked’’ (4), ‘‘passed’’
(5), ‘‘dropped’’ (6), ‘‘stood still and stopped’’ (7),
and his unwillingness to explain. The emphasis on
action proclaims his self-hood. But because he
avoids human contact, he is self-alienated, taking
himself to an existential brink. The reticence, the
vision of an amoral universe, the emphasis on one’s
own actions, and the presence of alienation add up
to a brand of existential thought steeped in arche-
typal depths. But he does reach beyond a solipsistic
existence. He attempts to see the order of the
universe and the order of his life as he contemplates
darkness and light, decision and indecision, active
forces and passive forces. He seeks to feel, to feel a
universe that returns no comprehensible sign of
affection. All of this is accomplished in Frost’s
conscious creation of a persona, who himself is a
creator masked in his quest for form.
In all of these ways, Frost’s ‘‘Acquainted with
the Night’’ moves toward the fulfillment of Joseph
Campbell’s four functions of a living mythology:
the metaphysical-mystical, the cosmological, the
social, and the psychological. Campbell empha-
sizes in the modern world these four functions are
soundly grounded in the individual, in ‘‘the center-
ing and harmonization of the individual’’ (Creative
Mythology, 623). This quest for the centering of
oneself seems the thrust of Frost’s poem. Pivoting
on deep-rooted symbols intrinsic to human experi-
ence, the poem invites an archetypal reading as it
extricates and transplants the symbols in the mod-
ern world, with their mythical vitality in tact.
In the life of ‘‘Acquainted with the Night,’’
exacting claims have assuredly tried to specify lit-
eral circumstances and events fortified in the
poem’s symbols. But to cling to such claims is to
sacrifice its universal potential. What must be
specified, however, lies in the last line of the
poem. Despite all at stake, the persona reinstates
his sense of having something: ‘‘I have been one
acquainted with the night.’’ Although this line may
suggest a lack of progress since line one, we know
that the process in between was anything but
uneventful. He has acquainted himself with his
condition as a thinking, feeling, and dynamic
being whose condition is as intriguing as it is bot-
tomless. He accepts his position, knowing he and
the night will never be in complete affinity. Inciting
a myriad of associations, night represents form-
lessnessyet,atthesametime,adesiretoponderit,
to create beyond it. And whether we fear the night,
celebrate it, or are indifferent to it, we shall always
be its acquaintance. The persona realizes that a
struggle with perplexity both invites and inhibits
us. If he has nothing else, the persona still has an
acquaintance with his own night. He has at least
chosen to explore his own nature, having
attempted ‘‘to reconcile waking consciousness to
the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this uni-
verse as it is’’ (Campbell,Creative Mythology,4).
He confronts a great mystery which is both within
and without him.
Source:Keat Murray, ‘‘Robert Frost’s Portrait of a Mod-
ern Mind: The Archetypal Resonance of ‘Acquainted
with the Night,’’’ inMidwest Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4,
Summer 2000, pp. 370–84.Sources
Brodsky, Joseph, ‘‘On Grief and Reason,’’ inHomage to
Robert Frost, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996, p. 7.
Frost, Robert, ‘‘Acquainted with the Night,’’ inComplete
Poems of Robert Frost, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston,
1967, p. 324; originally published in West-Running
Brook, Henry Holt, 1928.
Heaney, Seamus, ‘‘Above the Rim,’’ inHomage to Robert
Frost, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996, p. 87.
Murray, Keat. ‘‘Robert Frost’s Portrait of the Modern
Mind: The Archetypal Resonance of ‘Acquainted
with the Night,’’’ inMidwest Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4,
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