214 Poetry for Students

The speaker recalls the idea of the boy’s entering

the world of adulthood when he calls him a “big

boy / Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart.”

The boy’s pleadings to his sister—his only spoken

words in the poem—reflect his age and create a

sense of the pathetic nature of his death. The reader

is moved, but the speaker seems cold: his reaction

to the boy’s plea is, “So. But the hand was gone

already.” This decidedly detached response re-

flects the speaker giving up his search for expla-

nations for the accident. All he can say is, “So”

(for the boy’s expression of terror needs no ex-

planation) and “But the hand was gone already.”

While the speaker earlier dwelled on the possibil-

ity of personification, he has now retreated into the

world of facts. There is, ultimately, nothing to say

about the boy’s death other than the facts that led

up to it.

Lines 28-32:

These lines describe the doctor’s attempts at

saving the boy and the boy’s final breaths. The

“dark of ether” into which the doctor guides the

boy is like the underworld to which many mytho-

logical heroes journey—another of the poem’s

ironies. When told that the boy “puffed out his lips

with his breath,” the reader is invited to contrast

this image with the earlier one of the boy running

and yelling to his sister. Like all living things, he

has moved from a world of noisy action to one of

quiet stillness. Like the earlier statement, “But the

hand was gone already,” the description of the

boy’s final moments is shocking because of the de-

tached tone in which it is described: “Little—less—

nothing!—and that ended it.”

Lines 33-34:

The final lines reflect the speaker’s turning

wholly toward an attitude of detachment and seem-

ing indifference. His final remark of how both the

doctor and the family “turned to their affairs” seems

callous and almost offensive (especially with he

word “affairs,” implying that they all began riffling

through their social calendars)—but one must keep

in mind that the language here is more figurative

than literal. Eventuallythey “turned to their af-

fairs,” since there is simply nothing else for them

to do. Since there is “No more to build on there”

and “they / Were not the one dead,” the adults must

continue their lives, bereft of both the boy and any

solid explanation for why he had to die such a ter-

rible death.

Themes

Childhood versus Adulthood

“Out, Out—” concerns a boy who loses his

hand—and then his life—in an accident involving

a buzz saw with which he is working on a rural

Vermont farm. The boy is initially portrayed as a

“big boy / Doing a man’s work.” He is using the

buzz saw in an attempt to behave in a grown-up

way, as children will often become their parents’

“little helpers” in an attempt to assert their inde-

pendence and maturity. (This is what his sister is

doing by wearing an apron and announcing “Sup-

per” as if she is the matriarch of the family.) The

fact that he is cutting wood with a buzz saw—truly

a dangerous and “adult” piece of machinery—at-

tests to his desire to be a “big boy,” helping with

the chores. Despite that fact, the boy would be

pleased with having been given “the half hour /

That a boy counts so much when saved from work,”

he continues sawing the wood for his family’s

stove, willingly contributing to the literal and fig-

urative warmth of his home.

However, once the accident occurs, the boy be-

gins figuratively “Doing a man’s work” by dying

like a man. In the second it takes the saw to “leap”

at his hand, the boy enters an adulthood marked by

violence, fear, and death. Although the boy wanted

to behave like a “big boy,” once the accident oc-

curs, he betrays his age by crying like a terrified

child:

Out, Out—

Media

Adaptations

• A double audiocassette set titled Robert Frost
  Readswas released in 1997 by HarperCollins
  Publishers.


• Another audio edition of Frost reading his work
  is The Robert Frost Poetry Collection,released
  in 2000 by Harper Audio.


• The Poetry of Robert Frostis an audiocassette
  featuring poems read by Carl Reiner and Susan
  Anspach. It was released in 1996 by Dove
  Audio.