Explication of Out, Out by Robert Frost - Essay Example

These are themes which can be found in other poems by Robert Frost as well. An explication of the poem on this theme will show that the main thesis of the poem is that, no matter how sad an event such as death is, life must go on. Interestingly the opening of the poem keeps the reader constantly on edge, unsure whether something bad or good will come in the end. The first six lines of the poem set up a scene that sounds very nice. Although the first line does sound menacing, that is soon done away with by describing in great detail the lovely “sweet-scented stuff” that the sawdust gives off “when the breeze drew across it” (l.3) and showing the “Five mountain ranges one behind the other / Under the sunset far into Vermont” (l.5-6). These lines, taken together, make it sound as though the poem is going to be an ideal one about the pleasures of work in natural beauty and so on.

However, line seven returns the menace of the first line by repeating that “the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled” (l.7). This is again undone two lines later, in a line which both reduces the tension and immediately adds to it again. The poem says that “nothing happened” but then makes this uncertain by adding that the “day was all but done” (l.9). From here the subject matter of the poem becomes more clear. Everything after this point has a melancholy feel to it, as though the reader is aware of how the poem is going to end before actually getting there.

In the rest of the poem the boy loses his hand and has to get it amputated. He does not want it to be removed because he considers it to be the same as death. This is implied in the line that the boy “saw all was spoiled” (l.23). Because of this they have to sedate him, which ironically leads to his death when he does not recover from the anesthetic (l.26). It is clear that the boy's own sadness at his death, or even his lack of belief at the fact that he will eventually die, since he has lost his hand, actually leads to his immediate death much sooner than it should have happened.

It is common for Robert Frost's poetry to show this "kind of dark design" which "comes like a thief in the night to steal away innocence" (Rath 163). In other words, the poet is often concerned with death, and the sadness--or loss of innocence--that it causes to mankind. However, even though he does have this common theme which runs throughout his work, some of his poems show that life will go on after this dark design has completed. These poems show that "man cannot be totally gloomy-shut," he cannot just shut himself away and feel depressed all the time about death (Rath 164).

Instead, he will have to go on with his life. Interestingly, “Out, Out,” fits well into both categories. It is an exploration not only of he effect of death on other people, but of the loss of innocence of the boy who, when he loses his hand, sees his own death arriving. In this regard, since he was not able to move on as he should have, he actually dies, and is really unable to move on forever. Carl Runyon points out in his discussion of the poem that “we should not assume that the sister returned to the normal course of her life as quickly as did the doctor, or that the unseen parents immediately resumed their lives as if nothing had happened” (Runyon).

Runyon says that the quickness of the poem's ending does not suggest the ending of the poem is “callous,” just that it is “realistic” (Runyon). Taken as a whole, the poem suggests that "there is a line between the living and the dead that cannot be crossed," which is also expressed in several other poems by Frost (Fagan 157). This might be seen as a cynical view of life, and