Out, Out by Robert Frost

Out, Out by Robert Frost

Introduction

American poets are considered as one of the founders of modern poetry in country, to express, simply and deeply philosophical views, life and man's emotions rural. Robert Frost is one of the prominent poets in American history. He studied at Dartmouth College and in 1890 his family moved to Lawrence, Mississippi. He held various offices, such as a teacher, spinner, cobbler, farmer, rural newspaper editor and writer. In 1912 he traveled to England, where he contacted renowned poets, including Abercrombie and Edward Thomas, publishing there his first two books, a collection of poems and a series of dramatic monologues.

Robert Frost got an immediate success and in 1915 returned to America, where he was popularly recognized. His poems reflect the nature linked to the emotions of the men who inhabit it, in simple language that weaves maximum or morals however complex. His world is tragic but also, due to a philosophy of resignation or an elemental wisdom, tragedy is dissolved in natural events of life, with a slight sense of humor. In this essay, I will be going to analyze the most famous poem by Robert Frost “Out, Out”, which brings an important message to people's lives.

Discussion

"Out, Out" is one of Frost's most dramatic and celebrated poems. It was written in memorial to a neighborhood boy Frost knew when he was living in Franconia, New Hampshire. Raymond Tracy Fitzgerald, a 16-year-old twin, lived on the South Road outside of Bethlehem. An article about his sudden death appeared in the Littleton Courier on March 31, 1910. Frost knew the boy well; Frost's children and Fitzgerald had played together. Fitzgerald lost his life from shock and heart failure on March 24, 1910, within moments of having his hand lacerated by a buzz saw. The "Out, Out" of the title is a reference to Act 5, scene 5, of Shakespeare's Macbeth: "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." Robert Pack holds that Frost's "'Out, Out—'" "is a confrontation with such nothingness" and that the "meaninglessness of death is anticipated early in the poem with the image of dust" (Sears, 1983).

The young boy is assisting in the sawing of wood in his backyard. He is a "big boy / Doing a man's work, though a child at heart." The buzz saw is depicted as animate and malevolent from the start. It is described as snarling and rattling in the yard, seemingly out of control, as if on the lookout for something to tear into. The wood the boy is cutting, in contrast, is referred to as "sweet scented stuff," calling to mind the child's youth and innocence in contrast to the work he is doing (Locklear, 1991). The brutality of the saw and how quickly it ...