Response Criticism Of Out, Out By Robert Frost

Prompt C

I chose to write what a reader response criticism for 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 then the majority of the class. I don’t necessarily think everyone else is wrong, I just think I can justify my way of thinking also.

In “Out, Out” we as a class talked about that 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 forest. The first five lines are just giving you the imagery of what the smells of the wood are like and how so many trees had dropped “Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze

“And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled (524). This gave the imagery that the saw was not a good thing. The rest of the poem I read as though the trees were telling the poem. In line 10 I took the meaning the tree was hoping they would call it a day because the tree knew he was the next to fall and his sister was the tree next to him watching in horror. The saw wanted the “Supper” and started cutting down the tree AKA as the boy. I feel as though the hand symbolizes a tree. If you hold your hand up, it looks like a tree with your arm and lower hand as the trunk and your fingers as the

I took to mean that if it had stopped then the tree could have survived. “The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all-(524). This was the saw still going cutting deeper and deeper into the tree. The boy (tree) now knows that it is going to die and there is nothing he can do to stop it. “Don’t let him cut my hand off-Don’t let them sister (524)! The tree has now fallen and I think this is described as “he lay and puffed his lips out with his breath (524)’ I think this is the tree falling and everyone watching including the other trees until it comes to a complete fall to the ground and all the branches settling to the ground.

Little-less-nothing, in line 30 I thought meant that the little was the first cut of the trunk, less was the cut almost through and nothing was the tree fallen to the ground. Everything stops for that moment like in the poem. I think it’s the lumbers making sure no other trees are coming down with the tree that already fell. Once they realize, no other trees are coming down with the one that just fell they go back to work on killing more trees. “were not the one dead, turned to their affairs