Approaching Literature “ ‘Out, Out —,’ ” by Robert Frost

 Approaching Literature

6. “ ‘Out, Out —,’ ” by Robert Frost

There are many specific strategies to approaching a literary text and writing about

it. Some of these strategies we’ll discuss in detail in the next three chapters; others,

your teachers will recommend. We want to start, though, by suggesting a straightforward three-step approach that will give you a way into any written text: experience, analysis,

and extension.

Let’s try these steps with the following poem, “ ‘Out, Out —,’ ” by Robert Frost.

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard

And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,

Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

And from there those that lifted eyes could count

Five mountain ranges one behind the other 5

Under the sunset far into Vermont.

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,

As it ran light, or had to bear a load.

And nothing happened: day was all but done.

Call it a day, I wish they might have said 10

To please the boy by giving him the half hour

That a boy counts so much when saved from work.

His sister stood beside them in her apron

To tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw,

As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, 15

Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap —

He must have given the hand. However it was,

Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!

The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,

As he swung toward them holding up the hand 20

Half in appeal, but half as if to keep

The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all —

Since he was old enough to know, big boy

Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart —

He saw all spoiled. “Don’t let him cut my hand off — 25

The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!”

So. But the hand was gone already.

The doctor put him in the dark of ether.

He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.

And then — the watcher at his pulse took fright. 30

No one believed. They listened at his heart.

Little — less — nothing! — and that ended it.

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

Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

[1916]

Experience

When we experience literature, we respond to it subjectively, personally, emotionally.

This poem presents a fairly grisly scene: A boy is at work cutting wood, the saw slips,

and he cuts his hand. Despite the doctor’s efforts, the boy dies. Then everyone goes back to work — end of story. You might find this a distasteful scene, you might find

it sad, you might think that the people in the poem are heartless and cold, it might

remind you of something you read about or even experienced. Maybe you came away

thinking that most people aren’t really as callous as the ones in this poem. If you live in

the city, you might feel removed from the rural Vermont setting; if you’ve spent time on

a farm, the poem might have a more familiar ring to it. Any or all of these responses are

perfectly legitimate; in fact, at this early stage, there truly are no wrong answers, or any

answers at all. Even at this first step, however, you cannot help but notice the language

and details — such as the pretty sunset next to the sound of the buzz saw or the fact that

the boy appeals to his sister while the parents are absent from the scene.

Analysis

But you’re just getting started. You might think that you haven’t done very productive

work by merely responding, but you have: you’ve entered the world of the poem. The

next step is to move from feeling to thinking — to analyze the work. Here’s where you

begin to ask questions, to think about the way language is used, to draw inferences.

The key is observation: no detail is unimportant, so notice, notice, notice. In the next

chapters, we’ll talk more about what to look for, and give you strategies for paying

close attention to the work. For now, we’ll keep it simple. What do you notice about

the language and structure of this poem? What connections or patterns emerge?

What inferences might you draw from those connections? If you notice something

unusual, something that stands out from the rest of the poem, you probably want

to ask why. At this stage, you’re basically reading between the lines as you consider

what is directly expressed along with what is indirectly expressed through figurative

language (language that’s not literal) and other poetic techniques.

In the first line of “ ‘Out, Out — ’ ” you probably noted that the buzz saw is depicted

as an animal that “snarled and rattled,” a description repeated three times before the

saw “leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap” (l. 16). This personification

suggests that this wasn’t an accident; the saw is a predator that intended to hurt the

boy. Frost then gives us a description of the natural beauty of the landscape, the “five

mountain ranges one behind the other / under the sunset far into Vermont” (ll. 5–6).

Why would Frost turn a saw into a vicious animal and then show us the beautiful

Vermont countryside? Maybe he’s saying that nature has two sides, violent and

peaceful, predatory and nourishing? What do you think?

Notice that the poem is told from the third-person point of view, except in line 10,

when the speaker comments that he wishes they would have “Call[ed] it a day” and

given the boy a half hour away from his work. Why shift perspective here? Perhaps

it was Frost’s way of anticipating the accident to come. Maybe lines 10–12 are put in

there to give the poem a bit of soul, to express some regret, to temper the cold practicality

of the final lines. Perhaps you have another interpretation of this choice.

Titles can be a clue to larger issues in a poem, and the quotation marks that

surround this one signal that it’s taken from another source. The phrase “Out, out”

is from act V, scene v, of Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth. The exact lines are:

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.

 

Macbeth himself utters this speech at the end of the play after being informed

of Lady Macbeth’s death, recognizing the brevity of life and the futility of all his

worldly ambitions. You might ask why Frost would connect this rural scene with a

Shakespearean tragedy. Is Frost saying that death is tragic? Is it a reminder that life

is fleeting? Is it a recognition that the forces of nature (those “mountain ranges one

behind the other / Under the sunset”) are uncaring, indifferent to human beings? Is

the speaker denouncing those who “were not the one dead” for their lack of feeling,

acknowledging the necessity to carry on — or perhaps both? Is Frost arguing for a

carpe diem (seize the day) belief system, in which the best we can do is appreciate the

mountains and sunset because anything can happen? The answers to such analytical

questions will lead to your interpretation of the poem.

Extension

At this point, you have analyzed a text and drawn inferences to arrive at an interpretation.

For many assignments, that’s all you will need to do. But sometimes you’ll be

asked to extend your interpretation from the world of the poem to the real world.

This type of extension may involve examination of the background of the author,

research into the historical context of the work, or application of the ideas in the

piece to life in general.

For instance, biographical research on Frost and “ ‘Out, Out — ’ ” reveals that

Frost based the poem on an actual incident in 1915, when his neighbor’s son lost his

hand to a buzz saw. The boy went into shock from blood loss, and the efforts of the

physician called to the scene could not save him. Obviously, Frost did not write the

poem to report this specific incident, but he must have seen something in it that had

meaning beyond the actual event. The poem might be seen as his way of immortalizing

the boy and thus giving his young life meaning. Or perhaps Frost — who was

over forty at the time the poem was written — was recognizing his own mortality and

reflecting on the fleeting nature of all human life.

If you research the time period when this poem was written, you’ll find that

young children often worked long hours in unsafe conditions to help support their

families. Child labor laws adopted in 1924 ended this practice. Using this information,

you might build the case that Frost was making a political statement by illustrating

the dangers of expecting a boy, “a child at heart,” to do “a man’s work.” Also, the

poem offers an entrance into understanding the social conditions of this time period,

when everyone in the family had to contribute in order to survive. When the boy

“saw all spoiled,” he may have been thinking of the hardship of losing a hand, but he may also have been thinking that his loss of productivity would be a real hardship for

a family struggling to make it in the face of harsh economic realities.

The poem also asks how we should grieve. Is the best way to honor the dead

to return to the activities of the living? In an extension paper you might argue that

getting right back to work instead of grieving is an economic reality of the working

class, regardless of time and place. You might also consider the language of the poem

as a way to extend its meaning. Frost’s personification of the predatory saw within the

idyllic natural beauty could be read as the intrusion of the machine into the garden,

the negative or dangerous impact of technology (or, in Frost’s day, mechanization)

on the unspoiled beauty of nature. Can the two coexist? If you pursue this line of

thinking, imagine how you might tie it to earlier works of American literature or to

contemporary warnings of the dangers of technology on the natural world.