Out Out Flashcards
Context
1916 Mountain Interval
Death of Raymond Tracy Fitzgerald- neighbour in Vermont- death which left echo of a child’s “rueful cry”.
Harrowing tale reminds every human who has felt the inevitable piercing pains of grief and loss of the frailty of life.
Speaker
Detached observer- removed from emotion and reciting this narrative as if it were just another part of their routine as they “turned to their affairs”.
Once the young boy had left the world in “the dark of ether”.
Narrative form
Encapsulates the attitudes of those who grew up in “a world of farmyard stories”.
Those in rural life knew all about “men crushed in quarry machinery or pulled into the drums of threshing machines”
Poem of documentary weight which dealt with grief and loss in way many rural dwellers had to die to reality of farmyard life.
Blank Verse
Lack of emotional tribute reinforced by poets choice to write in Blank Verse- allowed story to flow with ease as an explanation of events- not an elegy of remorse.
Subconscious recognition of blank canvas of emotion which characterised every rural dwellers who could relate to chillingly catastrophic outcomes of their labour- poet felt no obligation to carefully fork regulated stanzas of predictable rhyme but resorted to blank verse in order to encompass the unpredictability of the story “spilling” of life from a young boy.
Tone
Conveys tone of acceptance within the grief and loss through the story telling nature, a state of acceptance.
Inspiration
Inspired by rural surroundings and affinity with nature.
Farm in New Hampshire.
Frost rejected his modernist associate Ezra Pound’s views of him as a simplistic nature poet stating that “there is always something else in my poetry”.
Background
Nature provides passive background to the horrific event of death and loss. The “mountain ranges one behind the other” set the image of serenity “under the sunset” in the Vermont.
Sibilance
Sibilance toyed with by Frost to describe the sensory image of sawdust as “sweet scented stuff” that blew in the breeze, awakens the reader’s senses, drawing them into the rural setting of the chilling events making the death of the boy a lot more tangible.
Reader feels as though they are within the rural landscape nearby the deathly buzz saw which “snarled and rattled” as this onomatopoeic description heightens the sensory experience in recollecting the event and bringing it into the presence of the reader, subsequently bribing the feelings of grief and loss closer to home as the reader is catapulted Into Frost’s familiar surroundings of Vermont.
Imagery
Red image of blood poring from the young boys hand as he “tried to keep the life from spilling”.
Boy was “put in the dark of ether” powerful description of the fearful journey towards death with the word “dark” heightening the ominous tone of the poem as the finality of death became nearer.
Onomatopoeic description of how boy “puffed” his final exhale. Boys death described in explicit realism with grief and loss hitting the reader as a shocking and forceful prospect.
Emotion
Narrative hostility of Out Out holds no emotional attachment- traces of wishful longing for life.
Utilises the New England vernacular early on in the poem with the wishful longing for those on the farm to have decided to “call it a day” and relieve the boy from his labours, preventing his death.
The colloquialism of the phrasing brings the poem closer to home in consideration of frost, as this wishing of sparing the life of the boy may well capture frosts frustration at wishing the lives of his own children could have been spared.
Allusion
Macbeth allusion- brief candle referencing frailty of life and how quick death can intervene.
