Out, Out- is a poem based on a true story that happened to the son of one of

Frost's friends. It tells of the untimely death of a young man, and in doing so,
it draws attention to the fragility of life and the somewhat callous nature in
which life must go on in the face of such an untimely death.
In the first stanza of ‘Out, out— ‘the speaker begins by describing, through
vibrant, sound-rich adjectives, the presence of a “buzz saw”. It is personified
through its “snarl[ing]” like animals, and “rattl[ing]” as if out of control or is
close to falling apart. Then it appears to move on its own. It makes “dust” and
drops “stove-length sticks of wood”. From these alliterated first lines, a
reader can determine that the young boy who is operating the machine is
cutting wood for the family’s stove.
In the next four lines, Frost utilizes the reader’s senses to expand the scene. If
one was present alongside the young man, they would be able to smell the
“Sweet” smell of the wood. It is brought up and away from the wood by the
“breeze”. Around the boy and his saw, if he lifted his eyes, there are “Five
mountain ranges one behind the other”. Frost gets very specific in the sixth
line, placing the scene in Virginia, United States.
In an immediate and shocking juxtaposition with the peaceful mountain
scene, the speaker returns to the saw in the next lines of ‘Out, out—’.
Repetition is used to reiterate the snarling and rattling of the machine. It
interrupts the landscape, reasserting its presence and its place as the focus of
the text. Frost’s speaker describes the way it moves back and forth between
light and heavy loads of wood. It seems, at this point, as though it can handle
the job that’s been set out for it.
Throughout the first portion of the day, “nothing happened”. It was not until
the end of the day, in which the boy’s attention started to drift. The speaker,
knowing what happens next, says that he wishes “they might have said / To
please the boy by giving him” some time off at the end of the day. But
unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
The poem is written in a detached manner and none of the characters are
named, almost suggesting that this could have happened to any of several
children. The poem could be an allegorical message about the poor treatment
of workers at that time.
It is in the next section of ‘Out, out—’ that the climax of the poem takes
shape. The sister comes to stand beside her brother and tells him that it’s time
to stop work and come in and have supper. As if reacting to the sister’s
words, the saw jumps and cuts the boy’s handoff. Frost again utilizes
personification to make to seem as though the saw is an animal acting
through its own will.
There is an interesting moment in lines seventeen and eighteen in which the
speaker goes back and forth between the saw leaping at the hand, or the hand
giving itself up to the saw. Either way, he determines it doesn’t matter. The
meeting was accepted by both parties.
Rather than cry out in pain or surprise, the boy lets out a “rueful laugh” when
he saw the hand fall. He quickly turns towards the house and his family
“holding up the hand”. Despite what seemed like an effort to keep “life from
spilling” from his severed appendage, the hand was completely separated
from his body.
The boy sat, in his mind, somewhere between childhood and adulthood. He
was “old enough to know that all was “spoiled”. Despite this, he exclaims to
his sister, asking when the doctor comes to restrict him from cutting off his
hand. Perhaps he spoke in shock, or ignorance, but, as the twenty-seventh
line states, the hand “was gone already”.
When the doctor did come in the last lines of ‘Out, out—’, he gave the boy
“ether” as an anesthetic, and the “watcher” who oversaw monitoring the
boy’s pulse “took fright”. Suddenly, the boy went from puffing out his lips
“with his breath” to nothing. His heart stopped through a progression, with
“Little—less—nothing! —and that ended it.” All the build-up to this moment
ceases and the child is dead. This is mirrored through the reactions of those
around the boy. They weren’t dead, so they went back to “their affairs”.
Frost uses punctuation to good effect in this latter part of the poem. The
dashes build suspense as do the short sentences, especially ‘Little-less-
nothing! -and that ended it.’ Here, and in the previous line is a sense of panic,
but once it is established that the boy has indeed a child, the line ‘No more to
build on there’ seems almost callous.
This narrative poem is set in one long stanza, written in unrhymed iambic
pentameter. In the absence of any formal rhyme scheme, some rhyme can
still be identified in the repetition of the words ‘saw’, ‘hand’, and ‘boy’
which are emphasized throughout. The title is taken from Macbeth’s
soliloquy ‘Out out brief candle’ in which he ponders the brevity and
pointlessness of life. him. The title of the poem ‘Out, Out-’ is an allusion to
Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It alludes to Macbeth’s comments at the event of
Lady Macbeth’s death in which he says ‘Out, out brief candle!’. This
effective use of allusion and the reference to the candle forebodes the death
of the boy as it parallels the end of the boy’s life in the same way a candle
goes off.
Throughout the poem, the Speaker has suggested that the boy’s parents are to
blame for his untimely death, and this seems to be confirmed in the abrupt
ending. It implies that the farmers and community do not have the luxury of
time to stop and grieve the loss of this child, and simply move on. In one
sense, he could be admiring their stoicism and commitment to their labor,
however, given earlier statements in the poem it is more likely that he feels
that they are cold and indifferent. The dominant feeling is one of sympathy
for the lost boy.
The poem conveys the idea that life is fragile and can be extinguished almost
as quickly as a candle. In the poem, we see how quickly the young boy's life
is ended, almost as quickly as blowing out a candle's flame.