Out, Out—

The poem’s title is a quotation from William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, citing Macbeth’s soliloquy upon hearing of his wife’s death (See: Literary Context). The title, then, immediately connotes death and tragedy, even as these elements become evident only about halfway through the poem.

The poem opens, “The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard” (Line 1). The immediate focus, even before the setting or the characters, is the machine. The speaker says it both “snarl[s]”—a sound evoking a threatening animal—and “rattle[s]”—the sound of a machine. The buzz saw is both animate and inanimate, both unpredictable and indifferent. These qualities give the machine a sense of danger.

The purpose of the buzz saw is to cut wood to provide fuel: It “made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood” (Line 2). This activity seems innocuous, but even the first line’s diction reinforces the sense of danger: The saw “make[s] dust” but merely “drop[s] stove-length sticks of wood,” as though its true purpose is to produce the dust and the fuel wood is a by-product. Dust is traditionally associated with death (“Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust”)—so while the people may use the saw to produce fuel, the machine itself produces death.

These early associations with danger and death are subtle and may not be immediately perceptible upon reading, especially alongside the more overt, pleasant tone in other descriptions of the setting. The wood is “[s]weet-scented stuff when the breeze dr[aws] across it” (Line 3), and the speaker describes the wider landscape:

[F]rom there those that lifted eyes could count

Five mountain ranges one behind the other

Under the sunset far into Vermont (Lines 4-6).

These details convey beauty and pleasure, yet the mountains are seen only by “those that lifted eyes” (Line 4)—in other words, those who bother to look. That fact seems obvious, but it implies that the characters do not bother to look. They are too involved in their work in this rural environment. This detail, though oblique and fleeting, contributes to a mood of rugged utilitarianism and austerity at odds with the otherwise idyllic setting. Frost crafts this tension to create a vague disquiet in the reading experience, even while the speaker’s voice is composed.

The poem’s first lines are likewise tonally counterintuitive. Though these lines open the narrative, they sound like a conclusion rather than an introduction to rising action:

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 (Lines 7-9).

The repetition of “snarled and rattled” (Lines 1, 7) suggests the wood-cutting is routine tedium despite the mechanical menace, and the account that “nothing happened” and the “day was all but done” (Line 9) forebodes nothing noteworthy. However, much like will happen with the main character, readers may be lulled into a mistaken sense of safety. A hint of conflict stirs when the speaker says,

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 10-12).

These lines provide subtle but important facets to the poem. First, this confirms people are present at the scene, a fact previously implied only in that someone has to operate the buzz saw (and perhaps in the suggestion of characters not gazing at the mountains). Most importantly, the speaker reveals that a boy is at work, and they hint that he will be the main character as the narrative progresses. Also, “they” (Line 10) here indicates adults, since they have the authority to declare the end of work for the day.

However, the adults do not allow the boy to stop work early, but the speaker wishes they had—and this, too, is a turning point in the dramatic situation, as it’s the first instance of the speaker’s first-person voice: “I wish…” (Line 1). Inserting this thought, in addition to the speaker’s newly heightened personality and presence, creates anticipation. The tone nearly shifts from remote placidity to combined anxiety and lament, but the voice retains distance and even a lyricism as though the speaker ultimately looks on from a place of understanding. Even with its calm, the utterance personalizes what is about to happen, making it more poignant and painful. Finally, by mentioning the boy’s perspective, what he “counts so much” (Line 12), the poem provides a contrast between adulthood and childhood, between experience and innocence. The adult speaker’s recognition of the child’s world further introduces empathic tension into the previously mechanical atmosphere.

The tragic accident—the poem’s central event—starts rather innocuously: “His sister stood beside him in her apron / To tell them ‘Supper’” (Lines 13-14). While some readers may insist that the sister’s action is unsafe, that this is the wrong way to draw the attention of people working with heavy equipment, the accident nevertheless happens. Notice, though, how the speaker describes the action:

[…] 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 (Lines 14-18).

The speaker initially personifies the saw but quickly qualifies the comparison—“or seemed to leap” (Line 16, emphasis added). The use of both figurative and literal descriptions, rather than choosing one over the other, juxtaposes poetic elements and invites comparison. The figurative explains the events by blaming the saw, giving it motivation and intention, as if the saw is hungry for supper too and feeds on human flesh. Conversely, the literal denies such fanciful explanation and insists on facing the facts, assigning all agency to human action: The boy “must have given the hand” (Line 17). While the speaker’s stoic tone throughout this event might create the impression of indifference, the word “given” (Line 17) describing the grisly exchange makes the passage bitterly ironic. That is, no one actually gives one’s hand to mutilation, but the boy’s action has the simplicity of giving. This odd effortlessness and “generosity,” superimposed on profound injury, lends the accident a heavy irony. The ironic tone continues when the speaker says, “Neither refused the meeting” (Line 18). Taken alone, such a statement evokes something commonplace, not a bloody tragedy. The narrative emotion is not the overt wailing and weeping one might expect but instead a subdued, profound sorrow.

The speaker next turns the focus to the boy’s initial reaction:

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 (Lines 19-22).

This “rueful laugh” (Line 1), so at odds with the expected dismay or alarm, is a shocked response to an incident too dreadful for him to emotionally process or even comprehend. Poetically, however, it adds to the ironic impact of the piece. Also, as the boy holds up his hand “half to keep / The life from spilling” (Lines 21-22), this indicates immediate threat to life—not life, but blood that spills from a wound—yet by saying “life,” the speaker draws attention to what ultimately is at stake.

After this initial shock, the boy then realizes the full extent of the accident:

Then the boy saw all—

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 (Lines 22-27).

This passage emphasizes a transitional phase between childhood and adulthood. Aside from its literal meaning, the phrase “the boy saw all” (Line 22) hints at the adolescent transition from innocence to experience. The speaker continues this thought by calling him a “big boy / Doing a man’s work” (Lines 23-24) but noting him to be still “a child at heart” (Line 24). This is the age often celebrated as one of promise, of life coming into fullness. It is therefore all the more ironic that the boy sees “all spoiled” (Line 25). Likewise, the boy speaks in denial, wanting to keep his hand—“Don’t let him cut my hand off— / The doctor, when he comes” (Lines 25-26)—when there is no hope for that, as “the hand was gone already” (Line 27).

The scene then shifts from the farmyard—whether to a hospital or elsewhere is not stated. However, the action is more important than setting:

The doctor put him in the dark of ether.

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 (Lines 28-32).

Presumably to stop the bleeding and better repair the wound, the doctor puts the boy to sleep “in the dark of ether” (Line 28). Sleep is a traditional metaphor for death, and this line foreshadows fatality. Indeed, “the watcher at his pulse took fright” (Line 30), and while the waning of the heartbeat offers some suspense, the event is mostly sudden. The finality of death resounds in the simple statement, “that ended it” (Line 32).

The closing lines may sound callous—“No more to build on there. And they, since they / Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs” (Lines 33-34). It may even sound cynical: The boy was used for his labor and is now discarded and forgotten. However, such a reading ignores the poem’s pervading irony. To say “No more to build on there” (Line 33) underscores that the boy’s life, while it lasted, was full of hope and promise, and the fact that cynical people would view the boy—and, by extension, all people—in strictly utilitarian terms only imbues his tragically shortened life with more pathos. Likewise, while it may sound unsympathetic for the survivors merely to “turn […] to their affairs” (Line 34), there is simply nothing else to do. Because no amount of remembrance will repurchase the boy, the mourners can only live their own, mortal lives.