20 pages • 40 minutes read
Robert FrostOut, Out—
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
During the Modernist period, most poets writing in English either abandoned traditional poetic forms or used them sparingly within a larger free-verse construct. However, Frost never strayed from traditional forms. (In fact, he reputedly said he would just as soon write in free verse as play tennis with the net down.) “‘Out, Out—’” is composed in blank verse, the form popularized by Shakespeare. Blank verse consists of lines in iambic pentameter that are unrhymed. Iambic pentameter consists of five iambic feet; the iamb is one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. As such, the first line of the poem scans in this manner:
The buzz | saw snarled | and rat | tled in | the yard (Line 1).
However, readers often note Frost’s colloquial language; that is, it sounds like common speech rather than florid or ornate poetry. This is no small feat to render verse in a fixed form that echoes ordinary speech, and it is one of the factors that makes Frost’s work at once so approachable and also so poetic.
Personification
Personification is the endowment of animate characteristics or powers on inanimate objects. “‘Out, Out—’” utilizes personification significantly in its descriptions of the buzz saw. First, the speaker says, “The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard” (Line 1). While the machine makes the mechanical sound of the “rattle” as expected, it also “snarls” as though an animal. On the one hand, the personification serves as foreshadowing, a warning that the saw is dangerous. However, with both the figurative and literal descriptions of the saw’s sound, the poem hints at the tension between the Romantic and Modern sensibilities.
This tension comes to a head in the accident that injures the boy:
[…] the saw
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand (Lines 14-17).
Again, the speaker utilizes personification, animating the saw to “leap” at the boy’s hand as if it were the threatening animal that “snarled” in early lines. However, the speaker immediately counters this figurative description by admitting the literal fact of the event, saying that the boy “must have given the hand” (Line 17). Initially, the speaker reflects the Romantic tendency to convey events in fanciful ways, yet to do so in this instance would be to deny human agency, error, and limitation.
Irony
Irony is an important topic in literary studies. Its application varies, but it generally expresses some sort of gap between expectation and reality, or intention and impact. Irony is a vital factor in “‘Out, Out—’” in two different ways. First, the poem is ironic overall in that the boy, so young and with his life ahead of him, is struck down unexpectedly. One might call this “tragic irony” for, as in tragic drama, the poem reflects the gap between the positive and affirming life we want to see and the tragic and sorrowful life (or death) that transpires.
There is also irony in the description of the accident, when the boy’s hand comes into contact with the buzz saw. The speaker uses both figurative and literal explanations for the accident: The saw “[l]eaped out at the boy’s hand” (Line 16); the boy “must have given the hand” (Line 17). The speaker next says, “However it was, / Neither refused the meeting” (Lines 17-18). This last statement is ironic because it expresses the gap between a commonplace and safe activity—having a meeting—and the momentous and horrific event in reality. One might call this “verbal irony” for being an ironic use of speech. The effect here intensifies the emotional import of the event because the speaker’s tone is restrained just as readers are likely to have some emotional reaction.
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