Throughout ‘Out, Out’, Frost utilises a multitude of techniques in order to express the thoughts, feelings and poignancy of a young child and the rural idyll he inhabits. The exploration of this important theme, and the injection of subtle vocabulary, allegory and syntax it entails, is of paramount importance to Frost and he treats it with according lustre. Throughout the poem Frost conjures a bleak and wholly malicious image of innocence being overwhelmed by the adult, and industrial, world: a theme prevalent throughout a large proportion of his poems.
From the start of the poem, Frost immediately creates a sense that the rural idyll is being entreated upon by an evil being: industry. For example: “And the buzz saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled.” The repetition contained within this excerpt, obviously, is a suitable method of conveying the relentlessness of the buzz saw, but it is its positioning that strikes the reader: it is located after a brief passage of Frost eloquently describing the surrounding scenery: “Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it…under the sunset far into Vermont.” This quotation helps to juxtapose rural life with industrial and is also, obviously, allegorical for the boy’s life being ended by the saw.
However, Frost also explores ulterior themes that underlie the majority of the poem. For example, on numerous occasions, it seems that Frost, using the events that unfold throughout the course of the poem, is commenting upon the altogether naivety and short-sightedness of farmers in rural America: “From there those that lifted eyes could count five mountain ranges.” This quotation particularly shows Frost making a profound and subtle inference on the fact that farmers do not ap...
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...ing of the arm is complexly expressed by Frost using an advanced myriad of techniques. Imagery, however, is what initially strikes the reader: “As if to prove saws knew what supper meant.” This personification of the saw shows an ulterior intelligence within the mechanisms of industry: it is as if it is wilfully destroying a human life. The metaphoric ‘meeting’ of saw with flesh is also profound: “He must have given the hand. However it was, neither refused the meeting.” This implies that the boy has suicidal tendencies, but also, allegorically, shows a wilful merging of two contrasting ways of life.
Despite the initial appearance of the poem as simplistic and even uninteresting, when one digs deeper into the pile of literary techniques cast into the poem by Frost a wholly different piece begins to unfurl slowly: a comment appropriate to most of his other works.
Frost first presents this idea by metaphorically discussing the spectacular abilities his daughter possesses but refuses to use. In the first quatrain, the poet suggests that his da...
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” Robert Frost once said. As is made fairly obvious by this quote, Frost was an adroit thinker. It seems like he spent much of his life thinking about the little things. He often pondered the meaning and symbolism of things he found in nature. Many readers find Robert Frost’s poems to be straightforward, yet his work contains deeper layers of complexity beneath the surface. His poems are not what they seem to be at first glance. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.
The poem, “Stopping by Woods…” speaks of a time that the author paused during a trip to simply enjoy the quiet and beauty of nature. During this short stop, he contemplates mortality and his life so far. Frost also cleverly uses the poems form and sounds to enhance the poem, to entice the readers senses, and immerse them in the scene.
The poem Fire and Ice is nine line long and is an example of a briefly ironic literary style of Frosts work. Fire and Ice ranges between two meter lengths. The poem uses interwoven rhymes founded on “ire,” “ice,” and “ate.” Although the meter is irregular it does keep up an iambic foot throughout the poem. The first line of the poem is a tetrameter followed by a dimeter which is followed by five line of tetrameter, ending with two lines of dimeter. The division of the line lengths is to render natural interruptions in the poem causing the reader to stop and reread what they have just read in order to comprehend the meaning of the lines containing the dimeter. For example when the reader reads “ Some say in ice” they go back to the first line of the poem to reread the topic of what some are saying about the end of the world. The rhyme scheme of “Fire and Ice” is ABAABCBCB style. The words “fire” and “ice” are being rhymed with themselves. By using this scheme it means that the poem falls soundly and flows. By using the rhyme scheme Frosts creates a connection between the words. For example “fire” and “desire,” which make it clear that the words are related on a deeper level. As well the rhyming of “fire” and “ice” with themselves made it work to cre...
Frost endeavored to approximate his poetry style to take a form of a conversation, whereby the verses in his poems were aimed at restoring sounds that underlie the words and enhance meaning through a vocal gesture. The style Frost used emphasized that his ear must be sensitive to his voice so as to capture with the word that is written the significance of sound in word that is spoken, (Frost, 1986). “The Death of the Hired Man” for example consists a dialogue almost as a whole between Warren the farmer husband and Mary his wife, an instance is, “‘when was I ever anything but kind to him? But I’ll not have the fellow back,’ he said.” M...
Frost was also praised for the depth of meaning behind his poetry and yet the simplistic and toneless language in which he used to write it. Randall Jarrell noted the rawness of Frost’s poetry by...
Robert Frost’s intricate meanings are stated in such a way that the reader must dwell so much deeper into the poem than one does when one just reads the poem. The poet has a major theme in all of his poems and that theme is nature. Nature is something that Frost could always relate to. In nature Frost sees life, people, and situations in life. In the poem “After Apple-Picking”, he uses the situation of a man picking an apple as another lesson on life. Picking apples is tedious work where one must observe and pick the ripest apples...
When talking about the saw, Frost uses personification and repetition. Personification is seen when he says that at times it can run light and at others it has to "bear a load", talking as if the saw was a person which had to carry something.
Robert Frost’s poem “Out, out” is set in Vermont during the late afternoon and is about a young boy who is cutting wood for the family stove and gets his hand cut off ultimately resulting in death. Frost uses this poem as a way to show that life has little sympathy for the dead. He does this by using many literary techniques such as imagery, personification, allusion, and blank verse. All of these techniques are important when understanding this poem because it helps to convey certain feeling and emotions from Frost’s perspective. The theme, symbols, and literary techniques Frost uses are essential in coming to terms with how to portray this poem.
In the last two lines of the poem, the family does nothing after the boy dies. They do not grieve and merely “turned to their affairs”. A little understated, but simple to understand why. To readers, it seems disbelieving because we imagine the mother and sister breaking down into violent sobs and begging for the boy to come back to life. We also imagine the father blaming himself for allowing his son to handle such a dangerous tool at that age. But if we think about it, all of those things are meaningless. There is nothing the family could have done to save their boy. Therefore, Frost is straightforward with the fact that the family promptly moves
One aspect Frost explores through his use of extended conceptual metaphor is the representation of life as a journey. The traveller, tempted by death, ultimately concludes that he has “miles to go”, where the repetition of the final line develops a sense of monotony, expressing the growing sense of enervation. Interpreted in a purely literal way the traveller is confronted by a simple conundrum: whether to stop or go. However, once read in context, Frost exposes the confrontation between “obligation and temptation” that encompasses both the poem and our lives. The traveller’s isolation from humanity and his exclusion from the woods whose owner “is in the village” perhaps mirrors Frost’s own sense of isolation. The change in rhyme scheme contributes uncertainty that, befitting of such a poe...
...ed by many scholars as his best work. It is through his awareness of the merit, the definitive disconnectedness, of nature and man that is most viewable in this poem. Throughout this essay, Frosts messages of innocence, evil, and design by deific intrusion reverberate true to his own personal standpoint of man and nature. It is in this, that Frost expresses the ideology of a benign deity.
...ert Frost 's poems, I now see his poems in a different perspective. I once thought as many do, that Frost 's poems where about nature but now I know that Frost 's true intention was of “taking life by the throat” (Frost Interview). While others consider him as a nature poet, Frost doesn’t believe himself as one and we can see his perspective in his poems but especially in “Mowing,” “After Apple-Picking,” and “The Road Not Taken.” Frost actually uses nature as an analogy to human life experiences or the troubles that people go through. He reflects these poems back to his personal life and the struggles he has been through also. After researching and reading about Robert Frost I have became very fond his work and enjoy looking deeper into his work trying to picture what he truly meant. While Frost uses a simple idea like nature, he relates it back to human nature.
In “Birches”, Robert Frost uses imagery and analogies as a way of conveying his message. Frost’s use of imagery and analogies are used in the themes of nature, analogies, and imagination. Frost uses imagery throughout the poem to create a vivid image of how he imagines the Birches to be. His use of comparisons enables the reader to view the Birches in numerous perspectives. His use of imagery and metaphors are appealing because they are pragmatic, and create a clear image for the reader.
The vivid imagery, symbolism, metaphors make his poetry elusive, through these elements Frost is able to give nature its dark side. It is these elements that must be analyzed to discover the hidden dark meaning within Roberts Frost’s poems. Lines that seemed simple at first become more complex after the reader analyzes the poem using elements of poetry. For example, in the poem Mending Wall it appears that Robert frost is talking about two man arguing about a wall but at a closer look the reader realizes that the poem is about the things that separate man from man, which can be viewed as destructive. In After Apple Picking, the darkness of nature is present through the man wanting sleep, which is symbolic of death. It might seem that the poem is about apple picking and hard work but it is actually about the nature of death.