Appeal of Robert Frost’s "out Out"

There have been many interesting and appealing poems written throughout history. One of the most interesting and appealing poems is Robert Frost’s “Out, Out”. The poem has the ability to make the reader visualize an event in vivid detail without making it into a short story. The poem depicts a very dramatic scene and makes it seem as if the reader is really there. Poems are generally thought to be about love and feelings, but some poems can actually be like a short story; these are called narrative poems, which means that they tell a story. The poem “Out, Out” is a great example of a narrative poem, telling the story of a young boy cutting a tree.

Robert Frost captures one’s attention with the opening line “The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard” (Frost, line 1). The sound of a buzz-saw snarling and rattling as it cuts through wood is a sound that everybody knows and can imagine the sound in their head. The opening line is dramatic, as the reader knows the dangers of a chainsaw. The title “Out, Out” is actually a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth when Macbeth receives news that his wife is dead; “Out, out, brief candle!” (Macbeth V, v, 23) signifies her death. The poem has a title about death, and the poem starts off by describing the sinister sounds that a buzz-saw makes. Frost uses a word that makes the buzz-saw seem angry or evil, as snarling means an angry growl. This buzz-saw is not nice sounding, it has an angry growl foreshadowing what will happen later in the poem.

Frost appeals to the senses to allow the reader to be able to envision this scene of a buzz-saw snarling and rattling, “made dust” (2), “sweet scented stuff” (3), “five mountain ranges one behind the other under the sunset far into Vermont” (5-6). The reader can now envision a wooded area in the mountains of Vermont where a boy is cutting wood and dust chips flying in the air with the sweet smell of freshly cut wood underneath a sunset. The foreshadowing continues with a sunset, which commonly symbolizes death or an ending. The buzz-saw continues its evil growl in line seven where it “Snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled”. The boy is getting more