Desert Island Poems: 'Out, Out—' by Robert Frost

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'The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard...'

‘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

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

To please the boy by giving him the half hour

That a boy counts so much when saved from work.

His sister stood beside him in her apron

To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, 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. 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

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—

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.

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.

Words and Deeds

'My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that become deeds.' This quotation can be found under the chapter 'Some Definitions' in his Collected Poems, Prose and Plays (1995). Robert Frost had a practical background, indeed he owned and ran his own farm at one point, so this poem, 'Out, Out—' is, we can safely assume, built on his own experience of working on farms and the dangers that presented, particularly to young workers (or specifically young children of the farmer), who were essentially used as cheap labour. By the end of the poem, we can feel a sense of anger from Frost at the irresponsibility that may have been rife among family farms of that time. Aside from its pointed message, though, this is a tragic poem about the loss of a young life to a farming accident, and Frost conveys it seemingly in high definition with his skilful use of blank verse.

The word poet comes from the Latin 'poēta', whose etymology means 'person [writer] of great skill' and I can't help but feel that Frost is one of the few poets who fully lives up to the term's etymology. This poem, in particular, while not as popular as 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' – perhaps because of the gore – is one of the best examples of his writing, sensibility and skill.

The Title

The title is taken from Macbeth and his last soliloquy where he says 'Out, out brief candle.' Why Frost didn't include the full phrase in the title is an interesting one, and maybe he felt it would have alluded too clearly to the play, or perhaps the inclusion of the candle in the title would have thrown up too many questions for the reader, as the poem itself doesn't feature one. Whatever is the case, the sense of it conveys the idea of the shortness of life, or life snuffed out before its time, which is carried through with the death of the child from the buzz-saw. It is uncharacteristic though for Frost to have a self-consciously literary title and to quote from Shakespeare in a title that is very much at odds with his down-to-earth approach. See his other titles, for example, such as 'The Pasture' or 'After Apple Picking'. Why, then, did Frost choose this occasion to pick a Shakespearean title? I suppose the most likely theory is that it places emphasis on the shortness of life, and also raises the status of the death of a child to that of a Shakespearean tragedy. In Macbeth's speech he's reflecting to the suicide of Lady Macbeth, after her orchestration of the death of King Duncan and subsequent mental breakdown, so I'm not entirely sure the events of that play and the events of this poem really are comaprable, particularly as it's hard to feel sympathy either for the treacherous Macbeth or Lady Macbeth at the end of that play. So, it's an odd choice of title from Frost, in many ways, however I think he gets away with it through the way in which it raises the death of the child to the pitch of Shakespearean tragedy. Also, perhaps Frost way trying to suggest that, in the way that Macbeth simply carried on after being notified of the death of Lady Macbeth, so too do the personae of the farm who 'since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.' The ruthlessness of Macbeth in simply carrying is paralleled in the farm workers.

What Happens?

In the poem the boy is operating a buzz saw and all of sudden, as his sister calls them back to the house for 'Supper', he takes his eye off his work for a second and the buzz saw leaps up and cuts off his hand, the blood loss of which eventually killing him. The opening line is packed with ominous consonants such as 'buzz' 'snarled' and 'rattled' and Frost personifies the saw which also pits the technological present against the natural backdrop of the poem and the 'Five mountain ranges one behind the other/ Under the sunset far into Vermont.'

'But the hand!'

The most masterful part of this poem is in how Frost describes the moment in which the boy's hand is cut off. In the hands of a lesser poet this could have been, pardon the phrase, butchered, but somehow through his skill Frost makes it a most poignant and sad episode. Instead of merely skipping over the incident, Frost really zooms in on it and expands on the details.

The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,

As he swung toward them holding up the hand

Half in appeal, but half as if to keep

The life from spilling.

The line break between 'hand' and half in appeal' really captures the movement of the boy swinging round to show everyone what has happened, with the word 'keep' balanced precariously at the end of that line, just in the way his life is hanging in the balance at that moment. The next phrase is 'big boy/ Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—' which points to, in my view, Frost's critique of child labour on farms at that time, or a dangerous, damaging machismo which is at work in such environments. Then Frost turns up the pathos with his use of dialogue and we hear from the boy directly as he writes:

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

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

So. But the hand was gone already.

The repetition of 'don't' and use of 'sister' instead of her name, also adds to the sense of desperation but also intimacy to the proceedings, which is then juxtaposed against the futility of such a pleas as 'the hand was gone already'. The last part of the middle section, where the boy dies, tests Frost's range of techniques but he manages it with:

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.

No one believed. They listened at his heart.

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

We notice here five end-stopped lines in a row which is highly uncommon for Frost who can usually be counted upon to keep the sentence running over the line. In fact there are six full stops if we count the phrase 'No one believed.' It is almost as if Frost, with these stop-start lines, is mimicking the boy's stuttering breaths as he passes away. His use of the em dash also mimics this sense of diminishing breath until 'that ended it.'

The Final Couplet

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

Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

The ending of this poem, like many great poems, and like many of the greatest Frost poems, comes as a surprise, and is more than a little abrupt. There is no great funeral, there is no weeping and gnashing of teeth, there are no funereal robes or ceremony; the final couplet offers us the exact opposite of this as the people of the farm 'turned to their affairs.' Here Frost is offering us his view of humanity as ultimately self-interested, vain and indifferent to the death of others, so long as it's not them. The emotion that he's referring to here is not quite 'schadenfreude' which is, according to the OED, 'malicious enjoyment of the misfortune of others', but something more apathetic. There is something damning though in Frost's language and tone. We observe, firstly, the repetition of 'they', which becomes accusatory: 'And they, since they...' The 'And' also brings with it a sense of 'and as for them...' which carries with it a tone of disgust and accusation from Frost. The phrase 'turned to their affairs' is also lacking in warmth, and is instead bureaucratic, robotic in tone. The word 'affairs' is a general word taken from the dictionary of commerce, capitalism, where, so often, profit is put before people, and in this case, profit is put before the death of the child. The word 'turned' also suggests a sense of turning away, turning one's back or turning a blind eye. The beauty of Frost's writing is in the very deliberate nature of his choice of language, and how the words he chooses resonate with a controlled ambiguity.

His use of 'No more to build on there' also brings with it a sense of resignation, as if the speaker has come to the end of his tether, or that the image has been given and that's it. Although, curiously, in the way that the farmworkers move on from the death, so too does the narrator, and as the poem has now finished, so too does the reader of the poem. There is a wonderfully complex mimesis of language and deed going on here at the end of the poem, where the farmworker, the narrator and the reader all, at the end of the poem, move on, turn to their affairs. The farmworkers have other work to attend to; the narrator has finished relating the story; and the reader has come to the end of the poem and will move on with their lives. It's a masterful ending by Frost, which captures the ruthlessness and business-minded nature of humanity. At the same time, maybe we're misreading it to suggest that Frost is offering his opinion on the other people at the farm, perhaps he's just presenting us with the image and letting use decide for ourselves, after all is the best way to deal with grief to keep busy, to move on? Is he suggesting that as humans we have an in-built function to continue in order to deal with death and trauma, and neither condemning nor praising human behaviour? The art of Frost is that he's able to keep these questions lingering at the end of his poems, or rather buzzing like electric wires above our head.

And that is the great skill of poēta Robert Frost.