"Out, Out-" (Edexcel IGCSE English Language A)

• The sudden and unremarkable death of the boy at the end of the poem is a stark reminder of the fragility of life:

  • One moment the boy is about to go in for dinner, the next he is dead

  • This suggests that tragedy can happen to anyone at any time

• The poem does not lament the death:

  • It suggests that life inevitably moves on as normal after people die

  • This makes death seem commonplace and routine

• The poem suggests that there is little value placed on the boy’s life:

  • The boy’s age is not revealed, but the speaker tells us that he was “doing a man’s work, though a child at heart”

  • The boy was employed doing dangerous work with little regard for his safety

• There is an implicit social criticism of the boy’s family and the other farmhands for allowing a boy to work with dangerous machinery

• The poem’s personification of the buzz-saw emphasises how its role has become more important than the boy’s life:

  • Advances in technology can also bring an increase in the possibility of accidents

  • The poem highlights what can happen when the relationship between people and technology goes wrong

• Technology can wield deadly power, but it is indifferent to whether it is the cause of harm

• The poem’s title is widely believed to be a reference to the line in Macbeth: “Out, out, brief candle!”:

  • Macbeth comments on the brevity of life

  • This links with the poem’s core idea of the unpredictability and fragility of life 

• The buzz-saw is personified, Frost presenting it as alive and having a mind of its own:

  • Its autonomy is conveyed as it “leaped out at the boy’s hand”

  • It is presented as a threat from the start of the poem, as though it is angry and looking for a way to act on that anger

• Nature and industry are juxtaposed against one another:

  • The buzz-saw which “snarled and rattled” contrasts with the five mountain ranges under the beautiful Vermont sunset

• Life and death are also juxtaposed, as in the first part of the poem the boy is alive, but at the end he dies and the poem finishes abruptly

• The lines referencing the five mountain ranges and the sunset use enjambment to convey the endless beauty of nature:

  • The sunset could also be symbolic of the end of the boy’s life

• The lack of punctuation in the lines “Since he was old enough to know, big boy/Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—” suggests the implicit criticism of the situation the boy finds himself in, having to take on work not suitable for a child

• The sibilance of “saw” and “snarked” combines with the “z” sound in “buzz” to make the saw sound menacing and harsh:

  • However, it is merely fulfilling its function of cutting wood

  • This implies that even the most mundane and functional of technology can be harmful

• When the boy’s hand meets the saw, Frost repeats the breathy “h” sounds in “He must have given the hand. However it was” to indicate the shock and shortness of breath the boy experiences

• The speaker informs the reader that the day “was all but done” and “call it a day, I wish they might have said”:

  • This foreshadows the accident that follows, as if they had have called it a day, the boy would have lived

  • This highlights the fine line between life and death, and how a simple decision can have terrible consequences

• This technique is used in the line: “Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.”

• This can be seen as representing the boy’s failing heartbeat:

  • The emphatic use of the full stop at the end of the line indicates the abrupt end to the boy’s life

• This is a narrative poem written in one long stanza, using unrhymed free verse:

  • The irregular rhyme scheme and uneven metre echo the sense of unpredictability in life

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