"Out, Out-" by Robert Frost

Robert Frost’s contemporary poem “Out, Out-“ is a dramatic narrative. The author’s tone is poignant about the boy’s poor fortune and disappointed in the reaction of the people who witnessed the accident. The poet is genuinely sorry for the boy and feels remorseful about loosing a young life to the strained maturity of child labor. Frost expresses this deep sorrow when he writes “Call it a day, I wish they might have said” since that would have prevented the boy’s death. The themes illustrated in this poem are the uncertainty and unpredictability of life; how people, children even, with such bright futures ahead of them are suddenly wiped out, their souls disappear into the wind and their memory is soon forgotten.

“Out, Out-“ falls under the category of allusion, a poem with a hidden meaning that can only be revealed by reading between the lines. The central moral of this poem is how serious the effects of child labor are: a boy doing a man’s job. The connection to modern times is established through the focus on child labor.

The boy is embittered at the incident, but is horrified at the prospect of losing his hand. Though a child at heart, the maturity forced upon him beyond his years enables him to see that his life would be handicapped without the hand. He eagerly pleads for it, not to cut it off as a useless part. It is for the reason that he would never be complete again that he dies, rather than the severity of his wound. He could no longer be the man working on the power-saw and therefore his manhood was flawed in the process.

There is repeated use of onomatopoeia in this poem, it allows us, readers, to imagine what we would be hearing in the particular situation. It plays a big role in the setting and in the effect most...

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The title of this poem is a direct reference to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, more specifically to the scene when Macbeth hears of his wife’s successful suicide attempt. How Macbeth, numb with sorrow, expounds that emotion with understatement infinitely more touching than weeping, wailing and rage. How he spoke “Out, out, brief candle!” “brief” referring to the short live span of the human race and the fact that she would have died anyway. Lady Macbeth uses the term “Out, damn'd spot! Out, I say!” while she frantically washes her hands in her sleep. We know that the title is a citation since it contains quotation marks.

It is assumed that this poem was based on a true story of a boy’s death whilst working in New England.

The central moral of “Out, Out-“ is how death is inevitable, but furthermore the significance of the extremely negative effect of child labor.