Out, Out—

Robert Frost’s “Out, Out—” was published in his collection Mountain Interval in 1916, during the Modern Period. The title is an allusion to William Shakespeare’s Macbeth: Macbeth’s famous “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” soliloquy upon learning that his wife has suddenly died includes the line, “Out, out, brief candle!” In Frost’s poem, a boy working in rural Vermont dies after his hand is cut off by a saw. Frost writes in blank verse that becomes fragmented in rhythm as the speaker narrates the accident and the apparent indifference of onlookers who “turned to their affairs” after the boy’s death. Ultimately, Frost underscores the fragility of life while acknowledging that such tragedies are part of the human experience; thus, the lives of the living must press on.