The poem "Out, Out-" by Robert Frost depicts the accidental death of a young boy working with a buzz saw. It uses vivid imagery and references to Shakespeare's Macbeth to portray how life is brief and fragile. The buzz saw represents the mechanization and loss of childhood through labor. Though the details are ordinary, the poem conveys a profound statement about the ephemeral nature of life and how death can come suddenly, signifying nothing.

1. Robert Frost’s out
out
AMER MAHMOOD YOUSAF
GOVT. ISLAMIA COLLEGE CIVIL LINES LAHORE.

2. • "Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
The sound and fury signified here is also
reflected in the pandemonium created by the
buzz-saw.

3. • No passage in English literature, except perhaps Hamlet‟s
“To be or not to be” soliloquy, is as famous as the 12 lines
uttered by Macbeth on hearing of his wife‟s death.
• The repeated command is directed to “brief candle,” an
apt symbol of human life. The brevity of life makes
man‟s struggles and aspirations meaningless. Macbeth in
the numbness of profound grief expounds that emotion
with understatement infinitely more poignant than
weeping, wailing and rage.
The poem "Out, Out-" by Robert Frost was
first published in 1916 in The Mountain
Interval .

4. • Frost‟s two-word title for his 34-line poem about the
accidental death of an ordinary Vermont boy imports all
of the drama of Shakespeare‟s tragedy of a heroic
Scottish tyrant faced with the realization that life is “a
tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying
nothing.”
The poem is "apparently based on a true
story of a boy's death whilst working in New
England.

5. • Frost‟s poem begins with vivid imagery of sound, sight
and smell. The onomatopoeia of line one: “The buzz saw
snarled and rattled in the yard” is redoubled in line seven:
“And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled.”
The verbs give the power tool animalistic life. “Snarled”
evokes angry dogs, wolves, and other quadruped beasts.
“Rattled” imports the sound of a snake giving warning
that it is about to strike with venomous fangs. Both words
resonate with sound and fury.
The poem is also a statement on the war in England
and Child Labour that had children attaining
manhood before they even reached it.

6. • We picture the falling sawdust, the stove-length sticks,
the five mountain ranges and a Vermont sunset. Images of
smell come with “Sweet-scented stuff” wafted by a
breeze.
• The workaday ordinariness of the scene is reinforced by
the empty understatement of line nine. “And nothing
happened: day was all but done.
The title has been taken from Macbeth's
soliloquy in which he ruminates over the
death of his wife.

7. • Line ten commences with the trite imperative for
cessation of labor, “Call it a day.” Then the speaker
asserts him
• self with the regretful comment, “I wish they might have
said.”
• The poet/speaker subtly foreshadows coming fatality with
his verb selection in “saved from work.”
The immaterial nihilism that the material life
arrives at is signified by the word 'nothing'.

8. • The central character‟s apron-wearing sister comes “to
tell them „Supper‟.”
• The saw, earlier invested (not quite personified) with
bestial animation, leaps at its evening meal. To diffuse
that fanciful notion, the speaker adds, “or seemed to leap/He must have given the hand.”
• tinged with cruel irony. To give one‟s hand suggests a
greeting or friendly handshake. “Neither refused the
meeting,” but don‟t get friendly with a spinning saw
blade.
Critics have seen the same as an expression
of New England Calvinist philosophy that was
prevalent during the times.

9. • the boy‟s first utterance is “a rueful laugh.” He holds up
the hand “as if to keep/ The life from spilling.”
(Textbooks commonly quote the latter phrase as an
example of metonymy: a figure of speech in which
something closely related life is used for what is actually
meant – blood.)
• The boy would lose his hand. But more tragically
unexplainable is that while under the doctor‟s
anesthesia, the boy dies apparently of shock.
As, the saying goes, experience is the greatest Teacher.
And one of the lessons learnt was that Death is
inevitable.The phrase "Little--less--nothing!" points to
the ultimate destination of Life: Nihilism.

10. • Like Lady Macbeth, he “should have died hereafter./
There would have been a time for such a word.” It makes
no sense for it to happen now. It is a death signifying
nothing.
The buzz-saw underlines the boy's
mechanical routine.

11. • Frost seems flippant in his concluding lines. “No more to
build on there.” At first the phrase seems a wry and
callous reference to jobs of construction in which power
saws are important. But perhaps the speaker is referring
to the life, which is snuffed like an extinguished candle:
the boy‟s heartbeat or pulse that faded “Little less
nothing.” Nothing can be built on nothing.
• . . . . And they, since they/ Were not the one dead, turned
to their affairs.

12. • The living have lives to lead, things to build on. Macbeth
also turned to his pressing affairs, heroically affirming his
selfhood, knowing full well there was nothing to build
on, acting his part in “a tale told by an idiot.”

13. • The juxtaposition of the buzz-saw against the tranquil
nature highlights the conflict between science and
nature;culture and nature where a boy is forced to
relegate his childhood that goes against Nature.
• The sister wearing an apron signifies the same.
• The handicap of the boy emblematizes the handicap of
civilization that is incomplete in spite of the professed
leaps made by technology.
• The 'half-hour' break symbolizes the condensation of his
childhood.
SYMBOLS

14. • The poem is penned in blank verse with deviations from iambic
pentameter.
• The poet utilizes onomatopoeia,assonance and alliteration.
• Frost employs imagery that assists in the narrative mode of storytelling.
• He adopts objectivity in tone and succeeds in stimulating the readers
rather than emotionally draining them.
• In "Out,Out-" , Robert Frost makes use of a contrarian style.
• For instance,though the poem about Life,it uses a machine to make a
statement on the same.
• Though the poet utilizes meiosis(understatement),the subtle treatment
leaves a lasting impression on the readers' mind.
• Though the poet denotes,he connotes more.
In this sense, his method is like Brecht's
alienation technique.