Out, Out—

Robert Frost's poem "Out, Out-" alludes to Macbeth's soliloquy in Act Five, Scene 5 of the play Macbeth. In Macbeth's soliloquy, he comments on the death of his wife and analyzes how insignificant...

The buzz saw in Robert Frost's "Out--Out--" symbolizes the mindless power of machinery that, when out of the control of man, can destroy human life. Published in 1916 when Britain was already...

Robert Frost's poem "Out, Out--" is the story of a young boy "Doing a man's work, though a child at heart--" (l. 24); the boy is using a saw to cut wood. Frost creates a sense of foreboding from...

Frost uses a detached and emotionless tone to create a sense of horror in this poem. The closest that the narrator gets to expressing emotion is when he comments that he wishes "they might have...

Both Wilfred Owen's "Disabled" and Robert Frost's "Out, Out--" are poems about the loss of life as it has been. While the boy in Frost's poem completely loses his life, Owen's young man loses his...

The poem by Robert Frost reports the death of a teenaged boy in a woodcutting accident. The deceptively straightforward, almost journalistically emotionless account represents the shock a senseless...

Tone describes the way the author seems to feel about the subject of the text. The tone of this text seems somewhat indifferent, or emotionless. The narrator describes a pretty violent and...

The last line represents some of the most disturbing elements featured in the poem. After enduring the pain of the boy pleading with the sister to prevent the doctor from amputating his arm,...

Robert Frost's 1916 poem "Out, Out—" is considered to be a narrative poem; it is written in one long stanza and consists of thirty-four lines. The poem does not follow any rhyme scheme, although it...

There are a number of examples of repetition in the poem. For example, the word "boy" is repeated six times to emphasize the youth of the character. The tragedy of the poem is all the more...

The commas and periods throughout "Out, Out - " are indications of slight pauses or the end of a sentence, as in most written literature. The colon in the ninth line ("nothing happened: day was all...

The educator answer above explains that this poem was based on a real event in Frost's life. However, it is not necessary to know the backstory to the poem in order to appreciate and feel moved by...

The irony here is that the accident happens at the end of the work day, at a time when the boy might have been dismissed to take an extra half hour to himself. In fact, his sister is even there...

There are arguably several themes at work in this poem, but I think Frost's choice of title points us toward what he considers to be the most important. "Out, out --" is an allusion to...

Life goes on. The boy made a fatal mistake and Frost says "No more to build on there" meaning the boy is now useless to his family. He can't be taught anything else and so those who are left must...

When trying to pick a thesis statement, it helps to think of the themes of the poem, and what the author is trying to say with its message. In this poem, Frost writes a rather depressing tale of a...

The "buzz saw" in this poem can indeed be interpreted as a symbol. Certainly the saw seems to have greater agency in the poem than the boy does. At the beginning of the poem, it is the saw itself...

Interestingly, "snarl" and "rattle" are both etymological equivalents. "Snarl" comes from the German word for "rattle." Both words are onomatopoeic, meaning that the words imitate the sound they...

Frost's narrator says that the "buzz saw snarled," using a metaphor (implied by the verb snarled) to compare the saw to an angry and unpredictable animal. A metaphor compares two unalike things,...

One important element in Frost's "Out, Out—" involves agency. The poem opens with personified actions of the buzzsaw against the passive mountain setting in the distance. This juxtaposition of...

Caesura is a pause in the middle of a line of poetry. It was originally meant as a place for Anglo-Saxon scops to draw in a breath given the length of the poetry they were reciting. While the use...

The poem “Out, Out—“ by Robert Frost was based on an actual farm accident that killed a neighbor boy when Frost was a boy himself. The title of the poem is found in the Shakespearean play Macbeth....

In Frost's poem, "Out, Out--," there is an underlying tension between machine and human. One interpretation of Frost's poem "Out, Out--" considers the year in which it was written, a time when boys...

Robert Frost's grisly poem "Out, Out" tells the story of a young boy cutting fire wood who gets his hand caught in the saw, nearly severing it. He startles when his sister calls out for supper...

This poem, which is based on a real-life event, is full of striking images. The most impressive one, in my opinion, occurs early in the poem when the narrator describes "five mountain ranges one...

Robert Frost's poem "Out, Out--" is a simple and sad story of a young boy who cuts off his hand in a work accident and ultimately bleeds to death. The poem is not only a comment on the brevity of...

Asking how the saw is made to be friendly or friend-like is an interesting question, considering that the first line doesn't make the saw sound nice at all. The saw snarls and rattles in the first...

This poem is a narrative poem because it tells a story. Narrative poetry can also contain a plot, refer to different characters, and even involve dialogues. The characters in this poem are the boy,...

The poem is indeed a narrative poem. It tells the story of a young man who has a fatal buzz-saw accident. As he is cutting wood, his sister rings the bell for supper, and the saw slips slicing...

Blank verse is a type of literary device used in poetry, signified as non-rhyming phrases in iambic pentameter (ten syllables per line). Poets use this form of verse in longer narrative poems. This...

Literally, references to sunset and time are significant to the plot because it affects when the boy will cut his hand off with the saw and die. Symbolically, these references to time foreshadow...

The saw definitely seems sinister because of Frost's repeated description of how it "snarled and rattled," but Frost is also careful to present a certain level of indifference within the saw, which...

I think that the primary message behind the poem is how people respond to grief. In the horrific nature of the accident it seems very surprising to find that the family returns to their normalcy...

The poem "Out, out--", by Robert Frost, can be interpreted in several ways, as is common with Frost's poetry. But it includes a description of various responses to life's tragedies. In this...

I have answered each of your questions below, and for your convenience I have included the questions in order. The allusion in the title of this poem is an allusion to Macbeth by William...

Robert Frost's poem, "Out, Out—" is a poem written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) in which an unidentified third-person narrator describes a farm accident resulting in the death of a...

Most people that have read Robert Frost's poetry are likely surprised at "Out, Out." First of all, it does not contain Frost's typical multi-stanza format with easily identifiable rhythm, meter,...

The reason is because if they had said the one thing instead of the other, the boy would not have been killed. When the accident happens, it is late. We are told that it was "under sunset" and...

The title of the poem is an allusion to a passage in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" which reads, "Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets...

“Out,Out—“ by Robert Frost is based on a real event. When he was a teenager, Frost’s neighbor friend had his hand cut off in an accident. This became the basis for this narrative poem. Another...

The poem recounts a day when the men and boys are working in the yard cutting firewood with a buzz saw. The setting is in Vermont, where five mountain ranges can be seen in the background. It is...

These two poems deal with traumatic experiences in different ways. Robert Frost's "Out, Out—" deals with the maiming of a boy by a sawmill as it happens. The poet powerfully describes the...

In his poem "Out, Out--" Robert Frost uses the juxtaposition of positive, warm details to emphasize the horror and unexpectedness of the boy's sudden death. The poem begins: The buzz saw snarled...

The buzz saw in the Robert Frost poem "Out, Out -" is personified, given the characteristics of a living, breathing entity, malevolent, like a beast. The buzz-saw "snarl(s) and rattle(s)...(making)...

This is one of my favorite poems by Frost. The poem's story, though graphic and tragic, makes use of so many types of figurative language that it serves as one of the great imagery poems. I...

The theme of this poem is the idea that fate, or chance, has a huge impact on our life. It is almost as if fate has a life of its own -- it goes around doing stuff to us and we can't stop it. In...