Robert Frost's poem "Out, Out--" is a simple and sad story of a young boy who cuts off his hand in a work accident and ultimately bleeds to death. The poem is not only a comment on the brevity of life but also its meaninglessness, as evidenced by the title of the poem which is an allusion to Macbeth's speech about the death of his wife:
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
The poem is told in a matter-of-fact tone. The boy's death seems perfectly natural within the scheme of things and when he's gone, life goes on as usual. Frost writes in the last lines:
Little, less, nothing!--and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the ones dead, turned to their affairs.
Frost, however, does concede a hint of regret and sadness over the course of events. He suggests regret that the boy is working so long and hard. In lines 10-13 he writes:
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.
Frost reveals sadness that such a young man should be involved in such a tragic accident. After all, the boy is not far removed from childhood and shouldn't be a casualty of such a meaningless 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.
Although Frost is basically unemotional about the tragedy, he does acknowledge some sadness over the futility of the boy's accidental death.
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