“Out, Out” is a poem by the US poet Robert Frost published in Frost’s Mountain Interval collection in 1916, and based on the actual incident which occurred to the son of Frost’s friend. The poem starts in remote Vermont, where his sister calls a young boy chopping firewood with a buzz screw to eat. However, just before he enters, the saw makes abrupt contact with his side, triggering bloodshed, which is eventually catastrophic. This disaster, where a little boy loses his life so lavishly and shockingly, indirectly challenges the worth of life itself. Indeed, the narrator’s factual account of its boy’s final moments and how everyone quickly returns to their everyday lives shows that death is a worldly part of daily life. Most of the poems are created out of poetic devices, which intensify the mood of the poem. Therefore, there is a deeper discussion of how some of the poetic devices affect the meaning and the feeling of Robert Frost’s “Out, Out.”
Some poetic devices are added in the poem to grab the imagination, making it possible for the reader to understand the poem easily, for example, the use of irony in the poem, which means using expression or exaggeration to transmit a message contrary to what is being said. In the poem, the time that the accident occurs is ironic since it occurs towards the close of the day at the moment when the boy would have been dismissed for an additional half-hour. It may also be the tiredness of a busy day leading to the crash. If the kid could play, he may still be alive with an intact side. Such is the tragedy, including the poem, with either the rugged wish of the speaker that he would have been ordered to “call it a day” (Archibald 10). The speaker tries to reason with his character, depicting the poem’s occurrences as out of the child’s hands.
The irony of the poem is that the crash occurs close to the end of the working day. At sunset, it occurs when the boy’s sister interrupts her job and says that supper is ready. Dramatic irony is the technique of the poet in the text. Indeed, the only straight incursion of the speaker occurs because of the first person’s pronoun “I,” in which he mourns how preventable this accident might be: “Call it one day, I wish you could have said it.” (Archibald 10) If the boy alone was enabled to become a boy, and not a worker, and if the time of work had been more humanly distributed, he would not have lost his hand but would make use of his infancy in a unique way.
There are other lines with deep content in the poem that show how deep the poet had powerful words and lines we identity personification being used. In “Out Out” Robert Frost tries to show how extreme emotion and many actions are, stating: “His sister stood beside them in her apron/To tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw, / As if it meant to prove saws know what supper meant, / Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap / He must have given a hand. However, it was/Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!” (Archibald 13-18). These lines reveal a brief tale inside the poem of how the boy interacts with the saw. These two parties have an unusual relationship since the saw itself has no human attributes. As the poem gives the saw human traits, he uses personification. The first occasion where the writer utilizes personification is in the first line of the above quotes where they mean the boy and the saw; the saw here makes the boy fair. This line may even predict future incidents along the following sections. Rather, the boy may have committed an unthinking error. The sight that he used was actually stationary, but the boy may inadvertently have placed his hand on the screw. With the use of personality, the meeting between the boy and the saw is even more fascinating. The need for dinner is at best a bizarre concept but keeps the poem fascinating.
The writer continues to make the poem more interesting by using imagery. Imaging is a colorful and lively depiction that attracts the senses and creativity of the readers. An example is where in “Out, Out,” Robert states: “And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled” (7). That repetitiveness of a mechanism such as a saw, Frost hammers – she does not think or feel, she repeats it. This is also essential because the perception of a character is relentless, not in the context of malice, but in the context that even a living vision is beyond mercy or emotion.
There are a lot more references to the instance by the depiction of imagery. A good example is where Robert states, “The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh.” (19). We get that after slashing his wrist, the boy’s first scream is “rude laughter,” or a regrettable joke. Essentially, this sequence is heartbreaking because the kid almost smiles at something enormous and then discovers that it is really something enormous. Images in the human imagination are random. They are the product of the subconsciousness in reaction to internal emotions concerning the environment around us; that is, they are a reaction to interactions both internally and externally. When images are used logically, such as poetry, they become the human symbolic language that describes our sensational reaction to an experience.
Symbolism is also used in the poem to express a particular message to the viewer. In other terms, whether the topic is complicated, words take on a pessimistic or black meaning while the icons recall pictures of cold and dark things. For example, the use of buzz saw symbolizes the meaningless strength of machines, which can wreck human existence if out of man’s reach (Robert 4). In “Out, Out,” Robert Frost used symbolism to produce a substantial impact to allow the reader to create nuance by stating: “And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled/ As it ran light, or had to bear a load” (Archibald 7-8). The understanding is that the personification saw does the job, rather than the child, in the opening section of the story, as in the soldiers who fire guns on their opponent. In the next paragraph, Robert states, “Nothing happened; the day was all but over.” (9). That line is used to symbolize the feeling of finality, which was imminent.
In conclusion, Frost describes the anguish of parents, implying that their sadness will never be diminished. While Frost does not mean that the grief of their parents is just a fleeting emotion, it implies that eventually, every person turns over their business to some extent after a catastrophe to restore their lives. Life is flagging, and that it might be taken away from us at some moment. People are used to always take different directions in life, maybe unexpectedly, but people must use their time wisely.
Works Cited
Robert Frost “‘OUT, OUT—’. Poetry Foundation, 1916, Web.
Henderson, Archibald. “ROBERT FROST’S”‘OUT, OUT’—”.” American Imago (1977): 12-27.