The Full Text of “Out, Out—”
1The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
2And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
3Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
4And from there those that lifted eyes could count
5Five mountain ranges one behind the other
6Under the sunset far into Vermont.
7And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
8As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
9And nothing happened: day was all but done.
10Call it a day, I wish they might have said
11To please the boy by giving him the half hour
12That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
13His sister stood beside him in her apron
14To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
15As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
16Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
17He must have given the hand. However it was,
18Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
19The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
20As he swung toward them holding up the hand
21Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
22The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
23Since he was old enough to know, big boy
24Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
25He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
26The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
27So. But the hand was gone already.
28The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
29He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
30And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
31No one believed. They listened at his heart.
32Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
33No more to build on there. And they, since they
34Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
The Full Text of “Out, Out—”
1The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
2And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
3Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
4And from there those that lifted eyes could count
5Five mountain ranges one behind the other
6Under the sunset far into Vermont.
7And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
8As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
9And nothing happened: day was all but done.
10Call it a day, I wish they might have said
11To please the boy by giving him the half hour
12That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
13His sister stood beside him in her apron
14To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
15As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
16Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
17He must have given the hand. However it was,
18Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
19The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
20As he swung toward them holding up the hand
21Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
22The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
23Since he was old enough to know, big boy
24Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
25He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
26The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
27So. But the hand was gone already.
28The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
29He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
30And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
31No one believed. They listened at his heart.
32Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
33No more to build on there. And they, since they
34Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
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“Out, Out—” Introduction
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"Out, Out" is a poem by American poet Robert Frost, published in Frost's 1916 collection Mountain Interval and based on a true incident that happened to Frost's friend's son. The poem is set in rural Vermont, where a young boy cutting wood with a buzz saw is called in for "supper" by his sister. But just as he turns to come in, the saw suddenly makes contact with his hand, causing an outpouring of blood that ultimately proves fatal. This tragedy, a young boy losing his life in such a wasteful and shocking way, implicitly questions the value of life itself. Indeed, the narrator's matter-of-fact presentation of the boy's final moments, and the way in which everyone soon goes back to their daily business, suggests that death is a mundane fact of daily life.
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“Out, Out—” Summary
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A buzz saw made a harsh and loud sound in the yard. Dust flew about as the saw cut pieces of wood for the stove, and the dust smelled sweet as it floated on the wind. Looking around, the scenery was beautiful: five mountain ranges were visible beneath the Vermont sunset. The saw made that same noise again, over and over, whether it was cutting wood or not. It is an uneventful day that was pretty much over. The narrator expresses a wish that those involved would have called it a day at this moment. This would have let the young boy working with the saw have an extra half hour of free time, which, as a boy, he'd have appreciated. The boy's sister stood next to him to announce that it was time for dinner. As though it was reacting to her announcement, the saw seemed to jump out at the boy—but in reality, it must have been that the boy slipped. Whichever way it happened, the saw and hand made contact. In shock, the boy laughed nervously before turning towards his family, holding his hand aloft in a way that was half looking for help and half trying to keep the blood from gushing out. Then, it dawned on the boy—who was still a child but old enough to do "a man's work"—that the situation was very serious. The boy begged his sister repeatedly not to let the soon-to-arrive doctor cut his hand off. But the hand was already lost. When the doctor arrived, he anaesthetized the boy with ether. The boy breathed with difficulty, and the doctor noticed that his pulse was dropping. No one could believe what was happening as they listened to his heart. The boy's heart beat fainter and fainter, before finally coming to a stop. That ended his life, with no more growing-up to be done. Because they weren't the ones who were dead, everyone else went back to their everyday lives.
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“Out, Out—” Themes
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Life and Death
“Out, Out” tells the tragic tale of a boy injured in an accident. Just as he is about to go in for his dinner, his arm gets caught in a buzz saw—he loses his hand, and subsequently dies from blood loss. The poem is thus a stark reminder of the fragility of life, and that tragedy can happen to anyone at any time. But the poem doesn’t simply lament this sad loss—it also hints at the way life moves on after people die, gently questioning the value of life in the first place.
The speaker begins the poem by painting a deliberately mundane scene, luring the reader into a false sense of security (though the buzz saw does carry with it the threat of violence from the beginning). In doing so, the poem is able to show the suddenness and apparent arbitrariness with which death can strike. Aside from its mentions of the buzz saw’s snarling and rattling sound, the opening of the poem is almost pastoral—that is, idyllic and set in rural surroundings. The breeze is “sweet-scented,” and “five mountain ranges” look over the boy’s family home. Indeed, even the buzz saw’s threatening sound is painted almost as part of the landscape, in the way that this sound seems to simply continue on throughout the day without any incident.
The poem makes this sense of mundane and everyday life abundantly clear: “And nothing happened: day was all but done.” There is only half an hour’s work left to do, and the speaker, foreshadowing the accident that is to come, wishes that the family had “call[ed] it a day” there and then. If they had, the boy would have lived—highlighting the fine margins between life and death, and the way that seemingly harmless decisions can have dire consequences.
The boy is also presented as a typical young man, going about the chores that he has been told to do but also longing to be done with the day’s work. “Supper”—called out by his sister—signals that it’s time to eat, and it’s probably in his excitement at being finished that the boy’s hand hits the saw. In other words, the boy is just going about his daily routine—but one wrong move changes everything. Again, death is shown to be lurking in the everyday, a constant presence and threat.
It’s in this brief moment that everything changes. The suddenness of what happens is portrayed in the boy’s sense of surprise: his first instinct is to laugh, and then to hold his arm up to keep “the life from spilling.” This laugh is an important moment, subtly expressing that life—for all its seriousness—can also be a kind of desperate comedy, in the way that it can be so instantly undone.
Indeed, the other characters in the poem find it hard to even believe what is happening. And then, almost as mundanely as he’d been going about his day’s work, the boy is dead. Here, the poem seems to question the value of a life cut so tragically short—in turn asking the value of life in the first place (especially if it can be lost so abruptly). The poem offers no kind words or grand sentiments about the death, only that there's “No more to build on there.” Death is final and irreversible, in whichever form it comes.
As if to further question the value of life, even the other characters in the poem don’t seem to linger too long on the boy’s death. Instead, “since they / Were not the one dead,” they just go back to their routine lives. By the end of the poem, then, the overwhelming atmosphere is one of senselessness, subtly asking what the purpose of the boy’s life actually was, and why he had to die. In turn, the poem asks these same questions of all human life, offering up no easy comforts to the reader.
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Humankind and Technology
“Out, Out” is a tale about people and the technology they use. Even in the poem’s relatively rural setting, technology is a fundamental part of daily life. (The poem is in fact based on a true story—one of Frost's friends lost his son in a similar accident.) But just as technological advancement grants people increased control and power over their world, these same advances also bring an increased potential for accidents and violence. Though the boy is evidently used to working with the buzz saw, it’s still this tool that brings about his sudden, unexpected, and wasteful death. The poem isn't anti-technology, but instead highlights what can happen when the relationship between people and technology goes wrong.
Frost makes the buzz saw a presence in the poem from the beginning, subtly hinting at the violence to come. Though it is a useful tool, it’s also deadly—and requires appropriate knowledge, control, and experience to use it safely. The poem personifies the buzz saw from the beginning, indicating the threat that it poses. It “snarl[s]” as though it’s angry about something, and is looking for a way to act on this anger. This harsh sound is contrasted with the idyllic peacefulness of the surrounding mountains, hinting at a division between nature and technology. However, the poem balances the threat of the saw with its portrayal as an everyday object—it does snarl and rattle, but that’s also just the sound that it makes when used. And like most technology, it gets used frequently without incident.
But just as the day is drawing to a close, the boy is injured by the saw. The way in which the poem shows this grim event speaks to the poem’s argument that technology, if treated with carelessness, is a danger as much as a help. The saw—as if trying to prove its own agency—seems to attack the boy just at the moment that he is supposed to be free from his work. It acts “as if to prove it knew what supper meant” (“Supper” is the call that the boy is responding too). It's "as if" the saw is resentful of the fact that the boy gets to go inside to his family.
That said, the poem seems to be aware that this personification of the saw is just an attempt to make sense of the tragic incident—the saw doesn't really hold any malicious thoughts. But it does hold an immense power that is essentially neutral, indifferent to whether it aids or injures people. And all it takes is for one slip—one misuse or accident—for technology to reveal its deadly power. And though the visiting doctor has his own tools and implements, he can do nothing to help the boy. The saw proves its might, and the helplessness of the people around the boy is matched only by the deadliness of the saw. The poem thus questions to what extent humanity is truly in control over its technological innovations, highlighting technology's often dormant but ever-present dangers.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Out, Out—”
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Lines 1-6
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.The poem opens with a brief focus on its key object: the buzz saw. From the beginning, the buzz saw "snarls" and "rattles," hinting at the terrible tragedy that is to come. "Snarled" also implies anger and aggression, and accordingly is part of the way that the poem personifies the buzz saw—as though the saw's waiting for its moment to strike. The alliteration of "saw" and "snarled" combines with the /z/ sound in "buzz" to create a harsh opening sound (this is also known as sibilance). That said, the poem is careful not to overdo the menace of the saw: it does make a harsh sound, but that's only because it needs to in order to fulfill its function of cutting wood.
The consonance of /d/ sounds that run throughout the first line make the line itself "rattle" with that particular sound, as though hinting at the power of the saw and the potential for its human users to lose control. This /d/ sound is emphasized through alliteration and consonance in the second line too. Here are the first two lines:
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,But as mentioned above, the poem doesn't go all out on setting up the saw as some kind of inanimate villain. The wood that gets chopped results in "Sweet-scented stuff" (more alliteration) carried on the "breeze." The mention of "breeze" opens up the poem's idyllic description of the setting: rural Vermont.
Lines 4-6 are pure pastoral poetry (that is, poetry that depicts the pleasures of rural life) deliberately luring the reader into a false sense of security after the vague opening threat of the buzz saw. Contrasting with the opening three lines, the poem uses much gentler /n/ consonance in these lines, also part of the way the first section disarms the reader:
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.The enjambment between the three lines here creates a sense of bountiful beauty, the long sentence length conveying the way that this natural beauty seems to stretch as far as the eye can —indeed, five mountain ranges are visible all at once "under the sunset."
It's also worth noting that, for all the alliteration and consonance, the poem sounds distinctly prose-like too. The vocabulary in particular is deliberately plain, and the rhetorical devices are used subtly. This is in part about luring the reader into the false sense of security mentioned above, but it's also designed to paint the scene as relatively mundane and everyday. In other words, the poem tries to portray a typical day in this family's life—which will help create the element of surprise with what follows.
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Lines 7-12
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. -
Lines 13-18
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! -
Lines 19-22
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— -
Lines 23-28
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. -
Lines 29-34
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.
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“Out, Out—” Symbols
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The Buzz Saw
The buzz saw is the most important object in "Out, Out." It symbolizes the dangers of technology if not handled properly. The poem focuses on the saw during the opening lines, discussing its harsh and almost violent sound, while also acknowledging its usefulness as a tool for chopping wood. The way the buzz saw "snarl[s] and rattle[s]" pre-empts the incident that leads to the boy's death later in the poem. On the one hand, the saw is just an everyday object, it's harsh sound a part of the environment of this particular Vermont home—on the other, it's a killer in waiting.
More generally, though, the saw represents technology. This isn't to paint technology as either bad or good, but more to show how entwined it is in daily life—even in rural Vermont—and how it carries power that can be difficult to harness and control. Technology can go badly wrong, in other words. Though it's not discussed explicitly, the saw is an important part of life for the family in the poem. It helps cut wood for the stove, which in turn heats the home. This showcases the usefulness of technology. But the saw also requires knowledge, expertise, and experience to use it properly and safely—one false move can prove deadly. So the saw also shows the deadly potential of technology if it isn't used correctly.
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“Out, Out—” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration is one of the more prominent poetic devices in "Out, Out." Despite the poem's lack of overall rhyme scheme or structured form, the frequency of repeated sounds makes it still feel lyrical.
Alliteration is first used as a way to bring the threatening noise of the buzz saw to life: "The buzz saw snarled." Immediately, there's a hissing, menacing quality present that suggests the potential violence of the saw. The alliteration continues thickly into line 2:
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
There's something almost methodical to the placement of these sounds across the line, suggesting the repetitive process of using the saw to cut equal pieces of wood. Line 3 also uses alliteration, meaning that the first three lines all use the device—creating an atmosphere thick with melody within an otherwise distinctly unpoetic poem:
Sweet-scented stuff ...
These three /s/ sounds (also known as sibilance) convey the sweetness of the woody smell as the buzz saw makes its cuts.
Another key use of alliteration comes when the boy's hand meets the saw. Here, breathy /h/ sounds in line 17 are used to indicate shock and shortness of breath as the boy realizes what's happened:
He must have given the hand. However it was,
This same sound is then repeated in lines 20 and 21:
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keepFinally, it's important to note the alliteration that appears in line 32 (which also uses asyndeton):
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
This line depicts the boy's fading heartbeat. Cleverly, the two /l/ sounds occur together to indicate when the boy's heart is—just about—still beating. But once the pulse has entirely gone, the /l/ sound disappears: "nothing!"
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Allusion
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Asyndeton
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Caesura
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Consonance
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End-Stopped Line
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Enjambment
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Personification
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Repetition
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Simile
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Assonance
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"Out, Out—" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Buzz saw
- Vermont
- Rueful
- Ether
- Affairs
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A big circular saw. A buzz saw can be hand-held or mounted on a table and is good for chopping wood.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Out, Out—”
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Form
"Out, Out" consists of a long, single stanza, so in that sense doesn't follow a strict form. This big block of text—34 lines, to be exact—does contribute to the poem's tone, however. The lack of form makes sense because Frost deliberately avoids adding anything overly poetic throughout "Out, Out" (e.g., big rhymes or flowery metaphors). The poem aims to create a false sense of security, so that the death of the boy feels all the more random and shocking. Accordingly, this essentially anti-poetic chunk of text helps make the poem seem more like a piece of prose, an unfolding narrative that is keen to use simple words and diction.
The form at first seems to reflect the sentiment of line 9: that "nothing happened" on the particular day in question. This, of course, is not true—something eventful does happen. And when it does, the prose-like sound of the poem in turn makes the boy's death all the more impactful on the reader.
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Meter
"Out, Out" is a poem written in blank verse, which means unrhymed iambic pentameter. Each line—apart from those that vary the pattern—has five feet of unstressed-stressed syllables (da-DUM).
A good example of this basic pattern is line 9:
And no- | thing hap- | pened: day | was all | but done.
It makes sense that this line conforms to the poem's metrical pattern. In doing so, it gives metrical representation to the idea that the day in this poem is just a typical day—until, of course, it all goes wrong. The regularity of the line reflects the regularity of the day, including the boy's use of the buzz saw (and its ominous sound).
There are many lines that vary the iambic pattern. Line 3, for example, is highly varied, conveying the "breeze" that drifts through the line and blows the meter out of its pattern:
Sweet-scented | stuff when | the breeze | drew a- | cross it.
Line 32 also contains an interesting variation, using caesura and asyndeton to create a highly disjointed and abrupt sounding line:
Little | —less—no- | thing!—and | that end- | ed it.
So, although the poem employs blank verse, it's not afraid to vary stresses to create powerfully expressive moments. In this way, it also mimics the way people add emphasis in everyday speech.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Out, Out" is written in blank verse, which is means that it follows unrhymed iambic pentameter. There is a good reason for this avoidance of steady rhymes: part of the poem's strategy is to lure the reader into a false sense of security, before the shocking event of the boy's accident. Accordingly, it uses rather un-poetic language for most of its lines, and the lack of rhymes is part of this. If the poem were to have neat and tidy rhymes at the end of each line, it would probably sound too controlled and pretty, and indeed might even sound inappropriate for the subject matter. Instead, it remains unpredictable, as are life and death.
There are, however, some noteworthy, if subtle, internal rhymes created through assonance and consonance. This is clear in lines 5-7, where the assonant /ow/ and /uh/ sounds combine with the consonance of /n/ and /t/ sounds (plus the subtle slant rhyme here between "count" and "Vermont") to add a distinct sense of musicality to the serene natural scene:
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.There's another striking internal rhyme in the poem's final two lines:
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.When read out loud, this single—though not perfect—rhyme is quite noticeable. It gives the poem an air of finality, as though the pages of a story book are being firmly shut.
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“Out, Out—” Speaker
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The speaker is an interesting presence in "Out, Out." For the most part, the poem aims for a detached narrative tone. Indeed, for the first nine lines there is nothing to suggest the presence of a first-person speaker at all. However, in lines 10-12 the speaker expresses an opinion on what is about to happen:
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.It's an intriguing intervention, almost as if the emotional shock of the boy's death overpowers the detachedness of the narrative voice. And it's to that more detached sound that the speaker then returns, with no more instances of the first-person pronoun cropping up throughout the rest of the poem.
This intervention suggests the speaker knows the family this has happened to, perhaps even knew boy. Additionally, as with many of Frost's poems, "Out, Out" captures the sound of the everyday speech of rural New England people. So, one could interpret the speaker as a neighbor of the family, or a nearby resident (in fact, this is something that really happened to the son of one of Frost's friends). Yet because the poem is written in blank verse and employs its distinctly detached tone, the reader never loses track of the fact that this is a poem. In fact, Frost's narrators often sound both like rural New Englanders and like accomplished poets. There's a sense of that combined quality in this poem as well.
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“Out, Out—” Setting
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"Out, Out" has a distinctive and clear setting. It's told in the past tense throughout, lending its events an air of inevitability—no one can go back to save the boy who dies.
The geographical setting of the poem is Vermont. It's a rural environment, even pastoral, with the mountains looming large and beautiful in the background. The boy who dies seems to be from a typical family, and his role cutting wood seems to be part of his role in the family too. The poem is keen to point out how the day in question was just a typical day in this young boy's life—until, of course, it wasn't.
The action in the poem's narrative takes place largely over one single day. However, the poem seems to widen its timespan in the last couple of lines:
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.Here, the poem looks at the days ahead, in which the family must return to their daily rhythms. This relates to the almost cruel way in which life goes on after the boy is dead.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Out, Out—”
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Literary Context
Robert Frost, one of America's most celebrated poets, lived from 1874 till 1963. Broadly speaking, Frost is considered one of the most important poets of the 20th century. Indeed, he was that rare thing: immensely popular with both the public and the critics. Such was his popularity that he was at one point dispatched to Russia by President Kennedy in an effort to ease tensions between the two countries. Together with Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot, he is one of the most read (and perhaps most misunderstood) poets of the age.
"Out, Out" is taken from the 1916 collection Mountain Interval, which opens with what is perhaps Frost's most famous poem, "The Road Not Taken." The collection's title is New England-speak for land in a valley, but also suggests a kind of pause. Indeed, this title relates nicely to "Out, Out" itself, in which the everyday lives of these Vermont inhabitants are suddenly interrupted by the boy's buzz saw accident. The poem shares two key traits with many of Frost's other poems: firstly, there is a focus on the natural world—used here as a way to lure the reader into a false sense of security. Secondly, the poem has a kind of fable-like quality to it, even if that is to ultimately question whether, in the light of such tragedies as the boy's young death, life actually has any meaning at all.
The title itself is also important to the literary context. "Out, out" appears in a speech by Macbeth in Shakespeare's play of the same name. It's a famous passage that characterizes life as a "tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing." The last two words are important to Frost's poem, as the narrator seems to deliberately avoid spelling out what—if anything—the boy's death signifies. Indeed, it might well be that the senselessness of his death demonstrates—proves, even—that Macbeth's view of the world is accurate.
Historical Context
Perhaps the most important part of the poem's historical context is that it is based on a true story. Frost's friend, Michael Fitzgerald, lost his young son in a buzz saw accident. Frost, an avid and remarkable reader of his own poetry, opted not to perform this poem in public, considering it "too cruel." Part of the poem's power, then, is that it is wholly realistic in the way that it depicts death as potentially sudden and surprising.
It's also worth noting the timing of the poem's publication. Mountain Interval was published during the First World War, one of humanity's most devastating and deadly conflicts. If the poem can be read as a parable about the dangers of technology when it slips beyond human control, the First World War embodies this idea in the cruelest, most horrific reality. New advances in weaponry and warfare meant that humans could kill each more efficiently and in greater number than ever—and they did.
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More “Out, Out—” Resources
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External Resources
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Macbeth's Soliloquy — A fascinating insight into the Macbeth soliloquy from which the poem's title is taken. Ian McKellen analyzes the speech.
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Raymond Tracy Fitzgerald — A link to a memorial page for Raymond Tracy Fitzgerald, the boy on whom Frost based the poem.
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More Articles and Poems — A valuable resource from Poetry Foundation with Frost poems, analysis, and biographical information.
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Mountain Interval — A link to the full collection from which this poem is taken.
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An Insightful Interview with the Poet — In this video, Robert Frost is interviewed by author Bela Kornitzer in 1952.
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A Reading of the Poem — The poem read for the Librivox archive.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Frost
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