Out Out Scasi Essay Final

S.C.A.S.I.
Essay on “Out, Out-“

The setting, characters, action, style and any other ideas are shown through a variety
of ways in the poem “Out, Out-“by Robert Frost. The poem briefly is about a young boy
who dies as a result of cutting his hand using a saw. Frost uses many techniques
including intertextuality, imagery, personification and much more throughout the poem
to express the story.
The poem takes place in a farm in Vermont near a mountain range at sunset. We know
this because it says on line 5 ‘’ five mountain ranges one behind another| Under the
sunset far into Vermont’’. The reason for this is to show the insignificance of the
child’s death to Vermont, let alone the whole world. This is very tragic and makes the
reader feel sorrowful for the boy. It also lets the focus be on the size of the
mountains compared to the farm, which suggests loneliness and sympathy because
there’s no one out there, to look after the boy.
There are a few characters in the poem. The main character is a boy and his character
is truly established through the technique of direct speech. The boy cries out ‘’don’t let
him cut my hand off| the doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’’ this reminds the
reader off the fact that he is actually a “little child doing a man’s job” and it shows us
that the boy is in a state of panic and is actually really scared. A sense of urgency is
created here by the caesuras in the long, complex sentence. Also the fact that there is
an exclamation mark adds more urgency to the boy’s little speech and makes the pace
of the poem go faster. This re-establishes the boy’scharacter.
The buzz saw also comes across as a character through the technique of
personification,through that and repetition the buzz saw’s character is recognized. The
words ‘’snarled and rattled’’ are continuously repeated throughout the poem to give the
buzz saw a devastating and monstrous character. Giving the saw a life of its own as it
‘’leaped’’ at the boy, makes it seem as though this monstrous character knew what
‘’supper’’ meant like it was a living thing-breathing, respiring and hunting. Due to this, it
makes it as though it was not the boys fault, even though everybody knows that the saw
is the inanimate object. By personifying the buzz saw as a monster, Frost generates
sympathy by making the audience realise the fact that the boy is just a young boy and
would be scared of things such as this.
The last character, his sister, had a brief role, but an extremely vital one. She shouts
out “supper”. The boy saw this as an opportunity to take a break. However supper had
two meanings. The boy can now eat and so could the saw. As though the saw knew what
“supper” meant, it “leaped” at the boy cutting his hand off which then eventually lead to
his death.
The action in the poem has a different pace at each stage in the poem. The poem starts
of slowly and peaceful with the description of the setting, then it rapidly increases in
speed as the boy suffers and then dies, then it returns to its normal pace as it has a
very blunt end. The action is a boy is doing a man’s job in a farm with a buzz saw. The
boy accidently misplaces his hand and the saw cuts it off at the speech of “supper”.
The boy then dies and everyone else including his family has to move on as though it is
the norm. We know this because everyone “turns back to their affairs” at the end of
the poem. This makes the reader feel mournful for the boy because nobody else is
mourning for him. This is comparable to soldiers on the battlefield because they must
ignore the bodies around them and continue to fight, the people of this town have
nothing to do but move on with their lives.
In the title of the poem (“Out, Out-“), intertextuality appears. It comes from the
story of Macbeth by Shakespeare. The quote continues to say “Out, out, brief candle”.
The purpose of this technique is to show the fragility of life. We can tell because a
candle can be easily blown out, just as easy as the boy losing his life to the buzz saw.
Therefore from the title we can tell the outcome of the poem and have a brief idea
even before the poem is read. The effect of this on the reader is that they feel a bit
off sympathy for the boy.
The tone of the poem is somewhat remorseful as the boy knew it was his fault that he
lost his hand. The boy does a “rueful laugh” which suggests that he regretted what he
had done and tried to laugh it off which is not possible because after all he did lose his
hand and he eventually does die after the doctor gave him an anaesthetic and he did
not wake up. Those two words sum up the tone of the poem and what the boy felt. The
effect of this on the reader is that they feel sorrowful for the boy because a little
child did lose his life.
The poem is structured in free verse. It has no regular rhythmic rhyming pattern. This
allows Robert Frost to put words anywhere he likes in the poem just for effect. For
example “Don’t let him cut my hand off -|”. “Off” is at the end of the line and it would
have been extremely difficult to insert the direct speech into the poem with a regular
rhythmic pattern. Also free verse represents the poem as though it is a short story
which it essentially is, it is as though someone is speaking naturally and telling the
story. Rhyme in poems, in fact anywhere, makes you remember things but in the poem
the boy’s life is not remembered. The effect of this on the reader is that the reader
would want someone to remember the boy but nobody does, thus causing the reader to
remember the boy as everyone deserves to be remembered by someone. The reader
essentially grieves over the boy which may be one reason Robert Frost wrote the poem
in the first place.
The poem is also structured according to sentence length. When the boy is full of life
at the beginning of the poem, lots of enjambment and long sentences are used to
reflect this. However, near the end of the poem, the sentence lengths get shorter and
many more punctuation marks are used. This shows the boy’s life getting shorter and
slowly dying.
To conclude, a variety of complex techniques such as personification, intertextuality

and repetition are used in the poem for people to sympathise with the boy and
remember him, as even his own family doesn’t. The poem is structured in free verse to
emphasise this fact as well.

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Essay on “Out, Out-“

To conclude, a variety of complex techniques such as personification, intertextuality

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