“‘Out, Out-’”
A Poem By Robert Frost
Analysis By:
Raine Sagramsingh and Rachel
Everhart
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
• New England
• Pulitzer Prize
• January 1961- JFK
• Realistic depictions of rural life
Recording of “‘Out, Out-’”
(“Category Archives”)
Summary
• Boy using buzz-saw in yard
• Sister says “Supper”
• Saw cuts his hand off
• Boy dies
• Bystanders pay no attention
Title
• “‘Out, Out-’”
• Allusion from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth:
“. . . 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 tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. “ (Act V, Scene 5)
Origin
• Accident five years before
• Narration
• First person: “I wish they might
have said” (10)
Personification
• “The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in
the yard” (1)
–Onomonapea
• “Leaped out at the boy's hand” (16).
Imagery
• Visual and auditory imagery
• “Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze
drew across it” (3).
• “Leaped out at the boy's hand, or
seemed to leap—” (16)
• “The boy's first outcry was a rueful
laugh” (19),
Perspective
• Beginning: far in distance
• Sister enters: focused
• Boys hand is cut off: pace starts to
quicken
• Boy passes: back into distance
Context
• “Doing a man's work, though a child at
heart—” (24)
• Realized he couldn’t survive without a
hand
• 1920’s: youth labor
–Life is work
Tone
• Calm, eerie, objective
• “So. But the hand was gone already” (27)
• “So”:
– Indifferent
– Outcome is not important
Diction
• Elementary
• Vivid and descriptive
• “Then the boy saw all—” (22)
– Central cause of the boy’s death
• “Five mountain ranges one behind the other”
(5)
• “Since he was old enough to know, big boy”
(23)
Form / Meter
• One block of text
• Blank verse
• Some exceptions
– “And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled”
(7),
• Enjambment
– “Five mountain ranges one behind the other / Under
the sunset far into Vermont” (5-6)
• Vastness of scene
Sound
• “r” sound- 58 times.
– Rough, rigid tone.
• “turned to their affairs.” (34)
– Sense of anger
• Alliteration
– “The buzz-saw snarled and rattled” (1)
The End of the Poem
• “Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs”
(36).
– Macbeth: “Signifying nothing”.
– Boy’s life=nothing
– His work=significant
Works Cited
"Category Archives: Mending Wall." PoemShape. Upinvermont, 26 Sep 2011. Web. 12 Sep 2012.
<http://poemshape.wordpress.com/category/frost-poems-discussed/mending-wallfrost-poems-discussed/>.
Gillespiet, Patrick. "Robert Frost's "Out, Out-"." POEMSHAPE. Upinvermont, 26 Sep 2011. Web.
16 Sep 2012. <http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/robert-frosts-out-out-2/>.
"'Out, Out-'." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 2011. Web. 16 Sep 2012.
<http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238122>.
"Out Out." Skoool.ie. Intel Corporation, 2008. Web. 16 Sep 2012.
<http://www.skoool.ie/examcentre_sc.asp?id=1250>.