BY ROBERT FROST

Out, Out!

This 39-line poem consists of one verse. In this poem rhythm matches meaning.

The poem is a narrative. It is an account of a single event, a boy’s death in a farmyard accident.

This poem is a story told by a narrator using past tense. It is almost entirely 3 rd-person narrative. The one use of 1st-person (‘I’) in the poem, in line 10, stands out and emphasises the narrator’s wish that the accident had never happened.

Form

The Poem and its meaning

‘Out Out’ is set in the countryside at sunset. The reference to ‘stove-length’ may suggest that the season is chilly enough to require stoves to be lit.

Frost describes the scene of a buzz-saw accident on a farm. While writing about a physical event, Frost also describes the suddenness of death.

Frost compares the ‘buzz-saw’ to a wild beast. He portrays it as a predator or killer of a young life. He also shows that life can end brutally.Frost also considers the way others just get on with their life after a death.

On one level, ‘Out Out’ recreates a tragic accident in a country location.The poem also describes the consequences of forcing a boy to do man’s work.It also explores the practical and hardheaded attitude of poor farmers towards survival.

On a deeper level, ‘Out Out’ portrays how some people treat human life as insignificant.

The Allusion of the Title

Macbethsays, on learning of the death of Lady Macbeth, his wife:

“…She should have died hereafter ;There would have been a time for such a word.To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time ;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,And then is heard no more. It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.”

Opening – Images of Sight, Sound and Smell

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yardAnd made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.And from there those that lifted eyes could countFive mountain ranges one behind the otherUnder the sunset far into Vermont.And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,As it ran light, or had to bear a load.And nothing happened: day was all but done.Call it a day, I wish they might have saidTo please the boy by giving him the half hourThat a boy counts so much when saved from work.

The Parody and the Irony

The reference to the boy looking to the hills echoes one of Frost’s favourite themes – the non-Utopic view of Nature – the boy admires the hills, is distracted; and the parody of the Psalm ‘I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help’ - In Frost’s depiction of Nature here, no help will come from the hills or from the great beyond.

The theme of transition to manhood is another of Frost’s themes – he is a boy doing a man’s work

Irony, Metonymy, Punctuation

His sister stood beside them in her apronTo tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap—He must have given the hand. However it was,Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,As he swung toward them holding up the handHalf in appeal, but half as if to keepThe life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—Since he was old enough to know, big boyDoing a man's work, though a child at heart—He saw all spoiled.

Fade to Grey and Understatement

"Don't let him cut my hand off—

The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"So. But the hand was gone already.The doctor put him in the dark of ether.He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.No one believed. They listened at his heart.Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.No more to build on there. And they, since theyWere not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

The Themes

The brevity of life makes man's struggles and aspirations meaningless.

Nature is not UtopiaThere is a Transition from Boyhood to

Manhood, which can be a difficult one