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Analysis Of 'Out, Out' By Robert Frost

Decent Essays

Lian Hearn says, “Death comes suddenly and life is fragile and brief…”. In Robert Frost’s poem ‘Out, Out-’, the author frequently demonstrates the fragility of life and death’s ability to change it in an instant, through the use of literary allusions, imagery, personification, and tension. These devices are used to help illustrate to the readers the fragility of life and how death can turn an ordinary day into a catastrophic one. Throughout the poem, Frost focuses on the theme of death and its capricious nature that can affect anyone at anytime.

Frost starts off the poem by using the title to allude to Shakespeare’s Macbeth and employing a blank verse to contribute to the idea of life’s delicacy and death’s ability to alter anyone’s life at any moment.

When Frost alludes to Shakespeare he is demonstrating life’s ability to be cut off abruptly and gone in a flicker. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, after Macbeth’s wife has died, Macbeth says “Out, out brief candle” (Shakespeare), and Frost’s poem is entitled ‘Out, Out-’. By not only alluding to this passage, but taking it and cutting it off, Frost demonstrates the fragility of life and how life can be cut short easily. By excluding the brief candle portion of the text, Frost implies the abruptness of death and how life can be gone in the flash of second, just like a candle can be blown out in a second by a simple breeze or huge gust of wind.

Additionally, the use of a blank verse makes the poem unpredictable since there is no regular rhyme scheme. The entirety of the poem sticks to blank verse and refrains from a rhyming pattern. This emphasizes that because of the blank verse, the poet is allowed a freedom that is not usually attainable with a rhyme scheme and Frost uses this to his advantage by indicating that death is unpredictable, just as the rhyme scheme in his poem is. Lastly, the iambic pentameter is known as a heartbeat rhythm, and Frost uses it to represent the life of the boy. The entire poem is set to an iambic pentameter, and when Frost says, “So. But the hand was already gone,” (Frost), he creates an irregular rhythm and uses it to demonstrate the boy’s death. By creating a sudden irregular rhythm, Frost demonstrates how death is something that

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