20 pages • 40 minutes read
Out, Out—
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Themes
Death in the Modern World
Death is an age-old subject for poetry. Traditionally, a poem concerning individual death would express lamentation or consolation, or it might celebrate the deceased person’s unique life. However, “‘Out, Out—’” does something different, as the deceased is relatively depersonalized. The narrative offers no details about him before his death; the speaker does not even indicate that the boy is part of the narrative until Line 11, and the mention of him seems almost in passing. Further, the poem never shares his name or his communal connections—essentially, the narrative does nothing to establish this boy as an individual.
This deviation from the traditional mode occurs in a time of cultural shift, when the effects of the industrial revolution are still very much being experienced. In this poem, industrialization, symbolized by the buzz saw, is largely responsible for the death of the boy; even if he had been wounded by a traditional tool such as an ax, survival would have been much more likely. Moreover, the survivors take no time to lament or memorialize the boy; they simply “turn […] to their affairs” (Line 34). Death in the modern world, the poem implies, is sudden, violent, and anonymous.
Industrialization and Lost Innocence
The poem’s setting is dominated by nature: It takes place on a farm within sight of “[f]ive mountain ranges one behind the other” (Line 5). Such a setting would have been familiar to readers throughout the ages, but into these familiar environs an innovation has come: the buzz saw. It is both a product of the industrial age as well as the epitome of the age itself. The saw’s purpose of utilitarian efficiency is clear, and since the labor on a farm is very arduous, any tool to lighten the load is welcome. However, any innovation comes with a cost, in terms of not only money but also consequences. In this case, the boy’s death expresses the heavy cost of industrialism insofar as labor has become more dangerous: Death is as close as one small mistake or distraction. Yet the poem’s choice of a boy as the victim of industrialization is significant. As a child is traditionally the symbol of innocence, the child’s death symbolizes the loss of innocence and idealism in American society at the hands of the expedience of the industrial age.
Romantic Versus Modern
The very first line of “‘Out, Out—’” presents contradictory imagery: “The buzz saw snarled and rattled” (Line 1). A snarl is an animalistic, natural sound; a rattle is a metallic, artificial sound. Since the buzz saw is not a natural object but a human invention, to say that the saw “snarled” is a figurative description of the machine’s sound, while “rattled” is a literal description. The saw thus epitomizes the conflict between the Romantic sensibility of fancy and imagination and the Modern sensibility of fact and realism.
The conflict comes to a head with the accident. The speaker’s personification of the saw, saying it “[l]eaped out at the boy’s hand” (Line 16), is a fanciful, Romantic trope from which the speaker changes course by admitting, “He [the boy] must have given the hand” (Line 17). The incident is so stark and gruesome that the playfulness and imaginative impulse of Romanticism seems out of place if not indecent; the unvarnished truth is necessary. The death of the boy, then, substantializes the passing of the Romantic sensibility now out of place and out of touch in the Modern world. Nevertheless, the passing is lamentable, as suggested by the powerlessness of the survivors who have no recourse but to “turn […] to their affairs” (Line 34).
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