'Out, Out' by Robert Frost

‘Out, Out’ by Robert Frost is a poem of a young boy cutting some wood on his buzz saw, to eventually cutting his hand off in the process. It has a nice tone throughout the poem until the end when everything takes a shift to an almost dark sense. The poem itself has an overall theme that life is short and can be lost in the blink of an eye, or in the mishap of a table saw.

The speaker throughout the poem has a moderate tone that is in an almost a callous sense. He starts off describing the scenery around him, talking about the buzz saw as though it is an animate object. It “snarls and rattles” almost as if it is controlling itself throughout these first couple lines. It goes on to tell us of the imagery of mountains and the sun setting into Vermont. He then goes on to tell the story of a boy cutting some wood as is his job. The poem starts to say that it is just an ordinary day and that the boy is about to call it a day. As his sister comes to call out to him that supper is ready, is when the saw seems to take a leap of its own, as if it had its own mind, and jumps out to cut the boys hand. The boy doesn't want his sister to call the doctor but she called him anyway, as he was losing too much blood. He then gets put under with ether and that is when the boy passes away.

            It is here where the tone of the poem just changes, makes a drastic shift.

“No more to build on there. And they, since they

Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.”

It is almost as if no one cares that this boy just passed away, no one has any care in the world at all that a young child is gone. Just because it is not them who passed away they don’t seem to want to give any attention to it. The death doesn't stop anything for this town, besides the work that the boy is doing. No grieving was done just a whole lot of moving on. The speakers view on everything changes with these lines, originally going from a normal tone to just a complete change to blunt ending within the last couple of lines. It is most likely a reference to seeing bodies in a battlefield and how you just have to watch them go down and do nothing about it.