Out, Out

In “Out, Out-”, Robert Frost utilizes symbolism to compare the death of a forcibly matured child to that of a drafted soldier. Throughout the poem, he uses personification, and symbolism to achieve this. The personification of the saw personifies a barking, hostile dog, that, because of his upbringing the child trusts. The symbolism is present throughout the poem, as to reinforce the idea of the hostility of war. The child’s superior figure, which is thought to be his father, symbolizes the oblivious officials that send and opt to draft soldiers into the war. The last line represents the apathy that soldiers are forced upon as their friends and fellow peers die. “Out, Out-” by Robert Frost is meant to question the ethics of wartime by paralleling

the boy’s death with the corruption and deaths of recruits in war.

The personification of the buzz saw plays the first vital role in the poem. It is the first prevalent source of worry that is felt by the reader. The words are personified to a ravaged dog, “The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard.../And the saw snarled and rattled, and snarled and rattled/”(1-7). Even though that the saw appears this way, the child continues to work. In an untrained situation, a barking dog should frighten the child, again, in an untrained situation. In this predicament, however, the child does not feel fear the saw, because he had been taught to work with it, and tolerate its noises. The speaker contrasts the snarling of the saw with the smells of the wood, “Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.”(3), to further emphasize the saw’s noises and dangerous nature. The boy is not aware of the true danger that it presents, because his upbringing has been so that he is oblivious to it. The significance of this is the parallel with wartime propaganda, and how it falsely portrays war. Young men, especially in the time that “Out, Out-,” was written (1916), were constantly bombarded by posters and adverts glorifying war, nationalism, and courage, urging them to enlist. This falsified perception of war was clarified as they witnessed first hand the horrors of war, much the same as the boy when his hand was severed, as result of his obvious questionable upbringing. He does not fear the saw because he had been taught early on to accept its noises, just the same as the soldiers had been taught wrongly of the truths of war.

The boy’s father, who had raised him to work early in life, could have prevented the trauma that the boy suffered in the end. The speaker gives us insight into the boys thinking, “Since he was old enough to know, big boy / Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart-“ (23-24). Michael R. Little describes in his analysis the desperation in the speaker’s voice, what could have been;

"Call it a day, I wish they might have said / To please the boy by giving him the half hour / That a boy counts so much when saved from work." The speaker here wishes the boy could be given some free time at the end of the day; work is necessary, but so is play. Play is especially rewarding and valuable to a boy who is given an unexpected break. Moreover, the adults around the boy are either so burdened by their work that they cannot spare him, or they are so distracted by their tasks that they fail to notice that the boy's childhood is being slowly sacrificed.”

Because of his father, the boy had been trained to embrace is work in a naïve, childlike fashion.

The same goes for the officials that promote wartime propaganda. Instead of explaining what would be witnessed in war, they glorified it, instilling a sense of nationalistic virtue in recruits. The recruits, instead of pride and nationalism, returned mentally disturbed. Most did not return. In the same way, the boy held an honorable image in his mind, one where was working to support his family. He was not, however, prepared for the causality that was inflicted upon him. The speaker presents the boys horrors, fully realizing the dangerous position he is in, “He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off - / The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’” (25-26) Michael R. Little explains in his analysis of “Out, Out-”,

“The tragedy of the poem is only in part that the boy dies; another aspect of the poem's tragedy is that the boy dies without ever having been allowed to live a boy's life; he dies doing grown-up

work.”

If the preventable measures had been taken, and the dangers of the saw explained to the boy, he could have kept his life, and lived it as a normal boy would at the time. In much of the same way, the soldier’s conditions may have been eradicated if the officials presenting the propaganda had rightfully prepared them for the horrors of war. Many would have been ready to witness the terrible acts of war, others possibly turning away completely. They could’ve been given the chance to live out a quiet citizens life, instead they were plagued by the propaganda that the officials presentd. The boy’s father failed him in the same way that the officials failed the soldiers; he could have given his son other opportunities, such as education or another position on the farm. Instead the boy suffered from a grave injury that ended his life.

In the last line of the poem the speaker presents the reader with the apathy that his family had to ensue, “No more to build on there.

And they, since they / Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.”(33-34) After the boy had taken his last breath, his family continued on with work. They knew that production would slow and output would suffer if they delayed. So, they pressed on, despite what they felt. The higher officers and platoon leaders during war enforced the same mindset on inexperienced recruits. They were aware that stopping on a battlefield would put the war effort at risk at large. This forced lack of concern created a feeling of guilt in the survivors, because they were essentially forced into apathy for the dead. Again because of the glorification of war, many new recruits were not prepared for this and suffered grave mental scars that would last most if not all of their

lives.

In conclusion, through the use of symbolism and personification, Robert Frost in “Out, Out-”successfully parallels the horrors of war that recruits witness and was affected by with the meaningless death of a boy. The boy in the beginning ignores the buzz saw’s “snarling”(1,7) because he had been raised to work with it instead of fearing it. This is compared to the soldiers who did not have a proper understanding of the war when they signed up. Both the boy and soldiers suffered because of their superior’s influences. These injuries that both the boy and the recruits suffered from could have been prevented. The boy could’ve been warned more sternly about the dangers of the saw, or given other opportunities elsewhere; the recruits could have been better prepared to witness the horrors they would be facing. The final lines of the poem show the utter apathy that the Boy’s family had to endure. This reflected upon what the soldiers were forced through. There was no time to stop and grieve, they could only repress their emotions and pray not to end up like their peers. By the end of the war, many had suffered gravely, and there were many dead. And like the boy in “Out, Out-”, they had been stripped of their innocence prematurely.