Analysis of Out, Out— Robert Frost’s Out, Out— is a poem about the value of life and how quickly it can end. The poem explores the themes of death and maturity and draws intriguing conclusions. Frost uses a variety of techniques to communicate and expand upon these themes specifically personification and repetition. Frost draws upon his early years where his farther William Prescott worked as an overseer at a mill. Frost is renowned for his accurate and grounded poem regarding rural life. Despite the tragic nature of this poem it conveys an important message. The title of the poem is a reference to the work of Shakespeare, in particular Macbeth. The title is the opening two words from the start of Macbeth’s monologue after the death of his …show more content…
After the boy’s sister calls out that supper is ready the boy eagerly rushes towards the food, in his rush, tragedy occurs. Frost describes it as “the saw, …, leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap – he must have given the hand” (14-17). In his rush, the boy caught his hand in the saw. Frost uses personification to add to the intensity of this moment, by the describing the saw as leaping out at the boy’s hand. It also once again addresses the theme of maturity, specifically responsibility. The speaker is almost defending the boy’s accident and trying to blame it on the saw. The boy is not old enough to be responsible for his actions yet they have trusted him to perform dangerous work. The boy’s reaction to the accident creates a surreal feeling, he is described as letting out a “rueful laugh” (19). The boy does not yet realise that he has sawn off his own hand. The speaker goes on to say “he was old enough to know, big boy doing a man’s work, though a child at heart” (23-24). This line directly addresses the theme of maturity and shows that despite how man like he may back at heart he is still immature. Despite him being old enough to know better it is expected that he will make mistakes as he is still a child regardless of whatever light they try to paint him in. The boy protests any attempt by a doctor to remove his hand however Frost kills any hope of a happy end bluntly stating “the hand was gone …show more content…
Frost communicates this message through the exploration of themes of death as well as maturity to a lesser degree. When one is old they realise they should have enjoyed their youth, when one is young they do not realise that they are in what should be the glory years of their life. The youth of personification and repetition throughout make the poem memorable and increases the potency of the
Selected Poems by Robert Frost, New York: Barnes and Noble, 2001 3.Graham, Judith, ed. Current Biography Yearbook Vol. 1962, New York: The H.W Wilson Company, 1993 4.Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, New York: Penguin Group, 1962 5.Weir, Peter. Dead Poets Society, 1989
Instructor Mendoza English 1B 22 July 2015. Robert Frost: Annotated Bibliography. Research Question: What are the common themes in Robert Frost's work? Robert Frost is a very successful poet from the 20th century, as well as a four time Pulitzer Prize winner.
In his Explicator article, “Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken,’” William George suggests that the poem includes “three distinct ages” of the narrator and focuses on the choices that this person must make at the different stages of his life (230). George differentiates the primary speaker of the poem, what he calls the “middle-aged self,” from the younger and older versions, noting that the middle-aged version mocks the other two by taking a more objective stance towards his decision. The younger and older versions “are given to emotion, self-deception, and self-congratulation, and both face a decision which the middle-aged speaker sees with more objective eyes than do his younger and older selves” (230). George demonstrates that, while the middle-aged self is able to view his other selves objectively without delusion and self-aggrandizement, the younger and older selves are incapable of this kind of objectivity in their decision-making.
In these two poems, Frost does a wonderful job of making it seem, at first glance, like wonderfully simple poems, but after taking a deeper look, one can see the deeper and darker meanings of the poems. Although these poems both deal with the gloomy, unhappy theme of suicide, Frost always leaves the character with hope and life. Neither of the characters in the poem actually commits suicide and both realize that it is not their time yet to leave the world. In one, the man realizes that time will decide when he will die and the other knows he has responsibilities in the world to attend to and take care of before he can go. So, although both people are hoping for death, Frost redeems them by having them take the higher road and leaving thoughts of death for another time.
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 except the young boy. Whereas the demise of Shakespeare’s character, Macbeth, an evil man, has been anticipated throughout the entire play. Through these writings, we are able gather a little more insight as to how these poets perhaps felt about dying and life itself.
Frost’s sentence structure is long and complicated. Many meanings of his poems are not revealed to the reader through first glance, but only after close introspection of the poem. The true meanings contained in Frost’s poems, are usually lessons on life. Frost uses symbolism of nature and incorporates that symbolism into everyday life situations. The speaker in the poems vary, in the poem “The Pasture”, Frost seems to be directly involved in the poem, where as in the poem “While in the Rose Pogonias”, he is a detached observer, viewing and talking about the world’s beauty. Subsequently, the author transfers that beauty over to the beauty of experiences that are achieved through everyday life.
Frost uses different stylistic devices throughout this poem. He is very descriptive using things such as imagery and personification to express his intentions in the poem. Frost uses imagery when he describes the setting of the place. He tells his readers the boy is standing outside by describing the visible mountain ranges and sets the time of day by saying that the sun is setting. Frost gives his readers an image of the boy feeling pain by using contradicting words such as "rueful" and "laugh" and by using powerful words such as "outcry". He also describes the blood coming from the boy's hand as life that is spilling. To show how the boy is dying, Frost gives his readers an image of the boy breathing shallowly by saying that he is puffing his lips out with his breath.
First, the themes of loss and caring are persistent throughout both pieces. However, “Out, Out” refers to the loss of a limb, and eventually life, is very unlike “Waiting for the End” in which there is a loss of presence of a significant other. In the poem, the protagonist is working on his regular labor intensive day job – and is required to saw some wood using an electric buzz saw. The conflict arises when his sister comes out of the house in order to tell the working boy that supper is ready. The crisis is the reaction,” As if to prove saws know what supper meant, [the saw] Leaped out at the boy’s hand” (Frost 385) and landed upon his other? hand, severing it. The theme of loss carries on to “Waiting for the End” but in a somewhat different fashion. The main character is losing himself in his own thoughts by immersing himself into the thoughts of letting his significant other go, thusly breaking the relationship. Mike, the lead s...
Robert Frost’s poem “Out, out” is set in Vermont during the late afternoon and is about a young boy who is cutting wood for the family stove and gets his hand cut off ultimately resulting in death. Frost uses this poem as a way to show that life has little sympathy for the dead. He does this by using many literary techniques such as imagery, personification, allusion, and blank verse. All of these techniques are important when understanding this poem because it helps to convey certain feeling and emotions from Frost’s perspective. The theme, symbols, and literary techniques Frost uses are essential in coming to terms with how to portray this poem.
Poetry is a creative art form that allows a critical thinking connection between the creator and the audience of each poem. The reader must think critically and in depth about the subject matter and meaning of what each poet is presenting with their body of work. On the other hand, the poet must be able to present their body of work with a unique writing style that encodes a deeper message than what appears on the surface. Most would say that poetry is read for its witty internal messages, but the reader must be able to accurately decipher the message the poet is presenting to fully understand the poet’s allusions. I believe that all poetry is inspired by memorable life events that have been experienced by an individual whether good or bad. If this is true, then much of the subject matter and meaning of poetry can be deciphered by identifying the key elements in each poem such as tones, moods, similes, metaphors, writing styles, and most importantly knowing the facts of the creator’s personal life experiences. In this essay, I will use the identifying techniques listed above to decipher the poem, “Out, Out-” by Robert Frost, to determine if Mr. Frost’s personal experiences with
Robert Frost is regarded as one of the most distinguished American poets in the twentieth century. His work usually realistically describes the rural life in New England in the early twentieth century and conveys complex social and philosophical themes. But his personal life was plagued with grief and loss, which is also reflected in his poems and the dark energy distinguishes Robert Frost’s poems, frequently conveyed in the use of lexical words like dark and its derivatives or synonyms, woods, snow, night, and so on. (Su, Y)
There have been many interesting and appealing poems written throughout history. One of the most interesting and appealing poems is Robert Frost’s “Out, Out”. The poem has the ability to make the reader visualize an event in vivid detail without making it into a short story. The poem depicts a very dramatic scene and makes it seem as if the reader is really there. Poems are generally thought to be about love and feelings, but some poems can actually be like a short story; these are called narrative poems, which means that they tell a story. The poem “Out, Out” is a great example of a narrative poem, telling the story of a young boy cutting a tree.
Nature is an important theme in every frost poem. Nature usually symbolizes age or other things throughout Frost’s poems. In lines 5-10 it says, “Often you must have seen them loaded with ice a sunny winter morning after a rain. They click upon themselves as the breeze rises, and turn many-colored as the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells.” This demonstrates how nature can sometimes symbolize something. Also in lines 29-33 it says, “ By riding them down over and over again until he took the stiffness out of them, and not one but hung limp, not one was left for him to conquer. He learned all there was to learn about not launching too soon.” In lines 44-48 it says, And life is too much like a pathless wood where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs broken across it, and one eye is weeping from a twig’s having lashed across it open. I’d like to get away from earth for a while.”
The vivid imagery, symbolism, metaphors make his poetry elusive, through these elements Frost is able to give nature its dark side. It is these elements that must be analyzed to discover the hidden dark meaning within Roberts Frost’s poems. Lines that seemed simple at first become more complex after the reader analyzes the poem using elements of poetry. For example, in the poem Mending Wall it appears that Robert frost is talking about two man arguing about a wall but at a closer look the reader realizes that the poem is about the things that separate man from man, which can be viewed as destructive. In After Apple Picking, the darkness of nature is present through the man wanting sleep, which is symbolic of death. It might seem that the poem is about apple picking and hard work but it is actually about the nature of death.
Prompt C I chose to write a reader response to criticism of the poem by Robert Frost “Out, Out”. I guess, I have a strange way of looking at things because this is not the first time I have a different opinion on what a poem or story means than the majority of the class. I don’t necessarily think everyone else is wrong, I just think I can justify my way of thinking. In “Out, Out” we as a class talked about how the boy had a terrible accident and died and how everyone then went back to work. I felt that it was more about nature and the destruction of the trees and forests.