This poem, titled “Out Out-” is a single stanza poem written by the American poet Robert Frost.

It was published as part of Mountain Interval, a collection of poems published by Frost in the
year 1916. Robert Frost is a highly celebrated and decorated poet, owing largely to his unique
blend of characteristics from modernist, and romantic poetry. Throughout his work, frost largely
employed the form of blank verse, characteristic of modernist poetry. In spite of the pastoral
elements predominant in frosts works, which is characteristic of romantic poetry, frost is still
considered a modern poet because through his poetry, frost explores the problems of man living
in a modern world dominated by science and technology. “Out Out” is set in an idyllic rural
landscape between the states of New Hampshire and Vermont. Written in blank verse, Frost both
adheres to and deviates from the metrical pattern of iambic pentameter, which was often used in
modernist poetry, to tell the sorry tale of an early demise, one which Robert Frost knew all too
well in his own family life.
Through a narrative structure that resembles a freytag’s pyramid, with an exposition, rising
action, climax, falling action, and a conclusion, Robert frost provides the reader with a theatrical
experience that evokes a sense of empathy within the reader to understand the role of machinery
and its impact on rural life in the early twentieth century.

Frost’s emphasis on the boy’s passivity and innocence in this situation is particularly significant
in the context of the time period. After moving to England with his family, Frost was forced to
return to America because of the onset of World War I in 1915, an event that would destroy the
lives of many innocent young boys. With that in mind, this poem can be read as a critique of the
world events that forced boys to leave their childhoods behind and ultimately be destroyed by
circumstances beyond their control. Death, child labor and fragility of life are the major themes
of this poem.
The poem’s title, out out, alludes to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. During Macbeth’s soliloquy after
learning about his wife’s death, Macbeth says “out out - brief candle” while lamenting his wife’s
death and commenting on the frailty and seeming pointlessness of life. This title thus serves as a
reminder to the reader that this poem will discuss death, and to an extent, the meaning of life.

The first line introduces one of the main characters – the saw. Although the saw is never visually
described, it is described through ample use of auditory imagery. In the first line, the saw is
anthropomorphized, and it is described using two onomatopoeic words “snarled and rattled”. The
word snarled portrays the seemingly beastly and animalistic quality of the saw, planting the idea
that it may be the so called villain briefly in the reader’s minds. The alliteration of "saw" and
"snarled" combined with Frost’s use of sibilance in the ‘z’ sound in "buzz" creates a harsh
opening sound to emphasize the menacing nature of the saw.
In line 1 and 2, The consonance of ‘d’ sounds make the line itself "rattle" with that particular
sound, as though hinting at the power of the saw and the potential for its human users to lose
control. In line 3, alliteration and sibilance is seen through the wood that gets chopped resulting
in "Sweet-scented stuff" that’s carried on by the "breeze." The mention of "breeze" opens up the
poem's idyllic description of the setting: rural Vermont.
Lines 4-6 are pure pastoral poetry (that is, poetry that depicts the pleasures of rural life)
deliberately luring the reader into a false sense of security after the vague opening threat of the
buzz saw. Contrasting with the opening three lines, the poem uses much gentler /n/ consonance
in these lines. The enjambment between the three lines here creates a sense of bountiful beauty,
the long sentence length conveying the way that this natural beauty seems to stretch as far as the
eye can.
In lines 7-8, the refrain “the buzz saw snarled and rattled” is used to provide a sense of the
repetitiveness of the task here, sawing wood. Additionally, it gives the reader a sensory
experience. Here, the saw is the subject. The machine is taking on man's tasks—usually we think
of men and women "bearing loads" literally or figuratively. It's a metaphor for work. But here,
it's the machine taking on the metaphor as well as the work itself.
In line 9, Frost uses an iambic meter to have this line sing. It's concise, simple, and the very
cadence of the line reinforces its message - that nothing out of the ordinary has happened yet. In
the second half of the sentence, the alliteration of the D words creates a tone of seriousness,
finality, and purpose.
In lines 10-12, The speaker switches into the first person to lament what happens later in the
poem. Frost appropriates a colloquialism—"call it a day"—here to great effect. The speaker uses
the vernacular of simple country folk, and we understand that he shares much in common with
the people whose lives he's describing in the poem. These lines are a reminder that the poem is
interested in different ideas of work and masculinity. While half an hour’s work is not much for a
man, it is of great deal for a boy doing a man’s work. In this hypothetical tangent, the boy is still
"saved" from work, as opposed to tragedy.
In lines 13-14, Frost uses visual imagery through picturesque country images – a domestic
female summoning the men in for supper – to create a scene of normalcy and calm before the
turning point. A definite turning point of the poem occurs in line 14 when the sister announces
'Supper' which triggers a radical change in circumstance for the boy.
Lines 14-18, contain both the rising action of the poem as well as the turning point of the poem
through the displacement of the saw. Frost melds the imagery of the boy hitting his hand on the
saw, and the imagery of the saw hitting the boy's hand. Frost refuses to give complete
responsibility for the accident to the boy, and his description also seems to better match the
strangeness and horror of the scene with more personification of the saw, by anthropomorphizing
the saw as getting excited for supper and “leaping out”. There is astute use of caesura in these
lines, end stops midway causing the reader to pause, a result of the work stopping when the saw
struck and the shock no doubt set in. By saying, "neither refused the meeting", the speaker is
trying to describe something that happened in the blink of an eye. It was fast, horrific, and he's
working to piece it together.
The strangeness of the scene in lines 19-22 is that the boy almost laughs before realizing that he
has grotesquely lacerated his hand. In line 22, Frost writes, “Life from spilling.” This is an
ambiguous phrase as it is meant metaphorically and literally. Metaphorically, “Life from
spilling” could mean he tried to keep his life from deteriorating. Whereas, in a literal sense “Life
from spilling” could provide the reader with an image of blood spilling out of his hands.
Lines 22-25 continue the discussion begun earlier in the poem about a boy doing a man's work.
The boy is still a boy, but he's old enough to realize the severity of his injury. Again, Frost is the
master of perfectly placed colloquialisms—the nickname "big boy" is contrasted with the work
he was doing and the injury he sustains. Robert Frost has highlighted the issue of child labor
through these lines. Although the boy performs a man’s tasks, he is still an innocent child at
heart.
Lines 25-27 tell us that the boy is at that transitional point between child and man; not physically
strong enough to withstand the shock but grown up enough to understand the dire circumstances
he's in. In line 27 the final turning point is reached. The hand cannot be saved, stitched back. The
syntax is most unusual. Note that one word - So. Through the use of caesura, the reader has to
take a relatively deep pause as that little word sums up the gravitas of the situation. This line also
has only 9 syllables, making it a line of four feet. This adds to the unusual and intense nature of
these lines.
There is a time gap between line 27 and 28, when the doctor gives the boy ether to numb the pain
and render him unconscious. Lines 28-32 highlight the speed with which the poem goes from
operating room to death, mirrors the speed with which the event took place. Line 32 contains an
interesting variation, using caesura and asyndeton to create a highly disjointed and abrupt
sounding line. We see the boy slip away, from "little" to "less" to "nothing." Notice how it isn't
the boy's mother, father, sister, or doctor watching his pulse. It's the "watcher." The term is
almost an industrial one, hinting at the conflict of man and nature vs industry in the 1910s. The
sentences here are structured so that the reader winds down to the eventual conclusion of death in
brief, half-line clauses. It's almost as though the poem's pulse is winding down with the boy's.
The phrase "That ended it" in line 32 portrays the boy as an object. He is simply a function of
how much work he can do, not a full human being. This once again highlights the rise of industry
and technology.
By the end of the poem, the narrator no longer has anything to say about the tragedy of the boy’s
death. While the first twenty-six lines contain elegant metaphors and descriptions of the scene,
the final eight lines are detached and unemotional. The final two lines are a challenge for the
conscience of the reader. The cold stark reality of “No more to build on there” hits home, as if
the speaker is saying, no more value in this dead boy. It implies that work has been invested in
and is indivisible from the boy's essence. Death here only stops work. And since the work is
what remains to be done, they abandon the memory of the boy. In the context of production, this
can be seen as a reading of the value of human life during WWI or can be seen as a commentary
on the nature of death in an industrialized world. In the last line of the poem, the narrator enters a
state of complete detachment, almost as if indifference is the only way to cope with the boy’s
death. Just as soldiers on the battlefield must ignore the bodies around them and continue to
fight, the people of this New England town have nothing to do but move on with their lives.

Through this single-stanza poem, Robert Frost successfully leaves his reader thinking about how
the world is becoming oblivious to the beauty of nature through the use of natural imagery,
juxtaposition, onomatopoeia, anthropomorphism, refrain irony, enjambment, characterization,
and caesura.