Out, Out By Robert Frost

In the poem, ‘Out, Out -’, Robert Frost reveals the fragility of life and its cheapness, as well as the extent of human selfishness through the indifferent bystanders. The themes of sudden death and child labour help to make this a despondent and shocking narrative poem. The title alludes to Macbeth’s speech on hearing of the unexpected passing of his wife, with the metaphor, ‘Out, out, brief candle’. The extinguished candle appears to symbolise the abruptness of the boy’s life being so carelessly silenced. This reflects the tragedy of the accidental death of a child doing a man’s job and the horrifying conclusion to the boy’s life. Frost also uses this poem as a medium to depict his views on the adversity and injustice of young, sometimes

The enjambment is much more frequent towards the beginning and fades out near the end. This generates speed whilst the boy is alive, however it also creates an inevitable sense of danger nearing the end; as the enjambment disappears, so does the boy’s life, highlighting a lack of control and power for the boy, and, more widely, the soldiers forced into war. The caesuras start to cut in towards the middle of the piece; the poem becomes more and more fragmented as the saw gains power, hence representing the saw tearing the boy’s life apart: “…cut my hand off- The doctor, when he comes.” Frost increases end-stopping at the end of the poem. As the commas give way to full stops, life gives way to death; the ending of lines mirrors the end of the boy’s life. This accentuates the brutality of life and its tragic

Furthermore, both words anthropomorphise the saw, giving a rather wild, untamed quality to it, as if it were a beast and not an inanimate object. The rhotic sounds in the words ‘snarled’ and ‘rattled’ represent the rough edges and feral characteristics of the saw. Frost uses this to highlight the animalistic and savage atmosphere created by the saw. Frost uses synaesthesia to bring the saw to life: ‘snarled’ and ‘saw’ – the combination of the image of the buzz saw and the harsh sibilance used creates a vivid image with connotations of danger and violence in the reader’s mind. The buzz saw is a circular item; the cyclic pattern of the poem can be used to demonstrate the rhythmic destruction caused by the saw. “Call it a day, I wish they might have said…’ - Frost appears to be sympathetic towards the boy, and the writer’s tone is one of blame towards the bystander as the one responsible for the tragedy, rather than blaming the boy. He also represents the bystanders as nameless, unspecific characters – ‘they…’ – which implies that Frost deliberately depersonalised the surrounding witnesses to create a sense of horror. However, as the author of this poem,