“Out, out -” by Robert Frost
Analysis by Giselle Scarano & Megan Wiedeman
Robert Frost
Lived from 1874 – 1963
Rural New England Poet
Won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Published poem in Mountain Interval
Summary
People are working in yard
Boy uses buzz saw to cut wood
Saw cuts boy’s hand off
Boy goes into shock and bleeds to death
People go back to work
Title
Allusion to the Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow speech from 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 v, lines 23-28
Speaker & Audience
Speaker – Someone reflecting upon the event interjecting once with first person perspective.
“Call it a day, I wish they might have said” (line 10)
Audience – No definite audience. The poem is a narrative, not specific to a certain group or person.
Occasion
No occasion for the poem when written in 1916.
Do note that there was an incident in 1910 where Raymond Fitzgerald, a young boy and neighbor of
Frost, lost his hand to an electric saw and died.
Setting
Time – Sunset, end of day, dinner time.
Place – Vermont (if not Vermont, then New England area), countryside, outdoors.
“Five mountain ranges one behind the other” (line 5)
“Under the sunset far into Vermont.” (line 6)
“And nothing happened: day was all but done.” (Line 9)
“To tell them ‘Supper.” (Line 14)
Subject
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard (line 1)
Onomatopoeia - Buzz
First thing introduced - emphasis
Sound is threatening and disruptive
Imagery
Opens with disturbance of nature
The buzz saw snarled and rattled…( line 1)
Switches to the beauty of nature
Five mountain ranges….( line 5)
Back to disruption.
And the saw snarled and rattled….( line 7)
Punctuation
Little–less–nothing! – and that ended it. (32)
Caesuras give the dramatic effect of time
Em Dash at the line ends (lines 16, 22, 24, 25)
Emphasizes previous thought
Tone
Somber
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work
Insensitive
No more to build on there. (33)
So. (27)
Central Theme
Loss of innocence
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart – (23 – 24)
Life goes on
…And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. (33 – 34)
Relates to real world situations
Realistic view of community
(10 - 12)
Symbolism
The doctor put him in the dark of ether. (line 28)
Ether: a rare element believed to be in space or the heavens.
Symbolic of Heaven, darkness and death.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled (line 7)
Saw is portrayed as a beast
Undermines the severity of the death
irony
He must have given the hand. However it was,(17)
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!(18)
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh, (19)
…Then the boy saw all- (line22)
So. But the hand was gone already. (line 27)
Literary Devices
Personification:
…At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
(Lines 14 – 16)
Biblical Allusion:
And from there those that lifted eyes could count (Line 4)
Matthew 17:8 - Lifting up their eyes, they saw no one, except Jesus alone.
Human Condition
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
(line 11 – 13)
Working children
Farming lifestyle
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all was spoiled…. (line 23 – 25)
Child doing a man’s work.
But the hand was gone already. (line 27)
Worth as much as the work he could do.
Parallelism
…And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. (line 33 & 34)
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Signifying nothing.
(Macbeth, Act V, scene v, lines 28)
Works Cited
Merriam-Webster: An Encyclopaedia Britannica Company.
Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2012.
Online Dictionary.
9/19.12 <www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ether>
Frost, Robert. "Analyze the way in which the buzz saw is characterized in Robert Frost's "Out,out--. - Out,
Out— - Questions & Answers." Study Guides, Lesson Plans, Homework Help, Answers & More enotes.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Oct. 2012. <http://www.enotes.com/out-out/q-and-a/robert-frost-poemout-out-analyze-way-which-buzz-163393/>.
Frost, Robert. "Robert Frost: Poems Study Guide : Summary and Analysis of "Out, Out" (1916) |
GradeSaver." Study Guides & Essay Editing | GradeSaver. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Oct. 2012.
<http://www.gradesaver.com/the-poetry-of-robert-frost/study-guide/section10/>.