Out, Out With Frost 's Reality Of Death

Life is so very fragile and flickering. It is something that we as humans hold on to so desperately. When Robert Frost Wrote the poem “Out, Out -” he wrote about to fragility of life itself and how quickly a life can end so suddenly and without warning. The title of Robert Frost’s poem is a direct reference to a speech in Shakespeare’s original story of Macbeth. Similarities between the two pieces of literature and their views are blatantly evident and they can be used together to help a reader understand the other.

An unknown author once wrote “Never take life too seriously; after all, no one gets out of it alive”. When reading this quote, there can almost be an immediate connection between two very good works of writing: Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” speech from Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth, and the poem “Out, Out --” by Robert Frost. Both allude to the idea that a single life, in its totality, denotes nothing, and eventually, everyone’s candle of life is blown out. However, each poet approaches this idea from opposite perspectives. Frost writes of a young, innocent boy whose life ends suddenly and unexpectedly. His poem is dry and lacks emotion from anyone

Death is something that at some point will come to each of us and has been explored in many forms of literature. “The Raven” and “Incident in a Rose Garden” are two poems that explore common beliefs and misconceptions about death. Though both poems differ in setting, tone, and mood there are surprising similarities in the literary tools they use and in the messages they attempt to convey. The setting and mood establish the tone and feel of a poem. In “The Raven” we are launched into a bleak and dreary winters night where a depressed narrator pines for his dead girlfriend.

The theme of loss is portrayed similarly in the two poems ‘Disabled’ and ‘Out, out-’. Both of these poems are about the protagonist dealing with physical loss as they both experience an accident. Both Wilfred Owen and Robert Frost manage to mesmerize their audience’s attention, and also sympathize for the protagonists’ misfortune. They do this by the use of many literary techniques which are obvious at times, but some are very subtle, such as similes, metaphors, personification, and contrasts.

"Out, Out," by Robert Frost is a gruesomely graphic and emotional poem about the tragic end of a young boy's life. It is a powerful expression about the fragility of life and the fact that death can come at any time. Death is always devastating, but it is even more so when the victim is just a young boy. The fact that the boy's death came right before he could " Call it a day" (750) leads one to think the tragedy might have been avoided and there by forces the reader to think, "What if." This poem brings the question of mortality to the reader's attention and shows that death has no age limit.

In lines 4 to 6 of Out, Out-, Frost describes a beautiful scene: And from there those that lifted eyes could count//Five mountain ranges one behind the other//Under the sunset far into Vermont. Frost uses assonance

play the line reads "Out, out - brief candle" and the line is said by

Frost uses a lot of end-stopped lines and enjambment in the lines of his poem. Both have an effect on the way the poem is read by the readers. The lines which use end-stops can be found throughout the beginnings of the poem.

Overall, Frost’s poem “Out, Out-” uses a variety of literary devices to distinguish the setting and the most thorough meaning of the poem such as imagery, diction, and several figurative language

In Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out” an overwhelming theme of agony can be sensed as

Everyone feels burdened by life at some point. Everyone wishes they could just close their eyes and make all the problems and struggles of life disappear. Some see death as a release from the chains and ropes with which the trials and tribulations of life bind the human race. Death is a powerful theme in literature, symbolized in a plethora of ways. In "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eve" Robert Frost uses subtle imagery, symbolism, rhythm and rhyme to invoke the yearning for death that the weary traveler of life feels.

The sister prepares the evening meal, making her contribution to the family; and calls on the boy to come and eat. The saw in the boy?s hands was still running and when he took his attention away from his work, and that split second of carelessness cost him an extremity. His instincts raised his arm upward to keep all the blood from spilling out immediately. When he realized what was happening, the boy finally realized he was to young to be doing a man?s work. The boy ?saw all spoiled,? and now knew his whole childhood had vanished and it was impossible to get it back. The boy frantically called out to his sister to make the doctor keep his hand on. The boy?s body must have instantly gone into shock and not felt the absence of the hand. When the doctor arrived he gave him some ether to make him go to sleep. The little boy began to lose his pulse and soon he was a stranger to the world. The people surrounding the boy never expected the loss of his hand to tragically end the little boy?s life. Frost?s almost appalling casual description of death shocks the reader enough to make them think. ?Since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs,? describes the environment of the survivors. They are forced to move on with their life and keep working because they cannot afford to stop and mourn.

Frost, as usual, puts a spin on the normal conventions of poetry. He leans toward the English sonnet, writing in iambic pentameter with fourteen lines separated into three quatrains –a set of four lines --and a couplet set apart at the end. However, Frost sets an unusual rhyme scheme for a sonnet. He rhymes each of his lines in pairs, or couplets.

Explore the similarities and differences between Disabled and ‘Out, Out - ' in terms of how Owen and Frost present attitudes to injury and death. What techniques do these poets use to create a sense of "before and after" a personal tragedy? Refer frequently to textual details.

Both poets share the same view towards young men, they express them as careless and innocent. In ‘Out,Out-’ the story could represent the author’s view regarding the ongoing war and how he believes young men are not ready and don't understand the consequences of their own actions. This is expressed in the poem by, “But the hand!, The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh”. This shows that Frost believes that the ‘big boy’ does not understand the severity of what happened until it was too late as he has been forced into adulthood. Using the word ‘rueful’ shows that the young boy does understands what he has just done but only realises it once it is too late. This expresses that the youth did not want to be working yet he was forced to do so