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Robert Frost's Out, Out

Decent Essays

Literary features are often used by poets as beasts of burden to carry the true meaning of the poem to their readers. Robert Frost’s “Out, Out—” tells the account of how a Vermont boy died in a tragic carpentry accident. Due to the excitement brought on by the thought of his working day being over and his own inexperience, the boy accidentally saws off his own hand and quickly enters into the literal “ether” while under “the dark of ether”, anesthesia, as the doctor is attempting to save the boy. In the title Frost alludes to one of Shakespeare’s most famous of lines, “Out, out, brief candle!”, immediately bringing forth thoughts on the brief and unpredictable nature of life and man’s, at times, callous nature towards it, that were evoked when they were first …show more content…

In line 9 the speaker states that, despite the saw’s seemingly aggressive noises, “nothing happened: day was all but done.” until the sister announces that supper is ready, when the saw “out at the boy’s hand… seemed to leap” (line 16), as if it also “knew what supper meant” (line 15). While to the reader the violent actions of the saw were perhaps foreshadowed in the description of it’s actions “snarled and rattled” (lines 1 and 7) both when “it ran light, or had to bear a load” (line 8) they were not foreseen by the boy who was “doing a man’s work, though still a child at heart”. Frost’s personification of the buzz-saw also points out another important note, his absolute refusal to lay blame on the boy for his own death. Frost’s tone towards the saw and those in charge of the boy suggest that despite the saw going out of control to the boy’s negligence, Frost believes that it is the blame in regards to that of the boy’s death is of the adults who did not tell the boy to “Call it a day” (line 10) sooner and the saw that “leaped out of the boy’s hand” (line

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