“Out, Out” by Robert Frost

Introduction

"Out, Out--" by Robert Frost is a verse about a juvenile young man who dies as a outcome of cutting his hand utilising a saw. In alignment to give the reader a clear image of this bizarre scenario, Frost utilizes imagery, personification, bare verse, and variation in judgment extent to brandish diverse sentiments and perceptions all through the poem. Frost also makes a quotation to Macbeth's talk in the play by Shakespear called Macbeth which is rather parallel to the occurrences in "Out, Out-."

Discussion and Analysis

No passage in English publications, except perhaps Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy, is as well known as the 12 lines uttered by Macbeth on hearing of his wife's death. The recurring order is administered 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. Frost's two-word name for his 34-line verse about the accidental death of an commonplace Vermont boy trades all of the drama of Shakespeare's tragedy of a heroic Scottish tyrant faced with the realization that life is "a tale/ notified by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing."

Frost's poem starts with vivid imagery of sound, sight and smell. The onomatopoeia of line one: "The buzz glimpsed 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 device animalistic life. "Snarled" evokes furious canines, wolves, and other quadruped beasts. "Rattled" imports the sound of a snake giving warning that it is about to strike with venomous fangs. Both phrases resonate with sound and fury. We image the falling sawdust, the ...