TPCASST

Title: "Out, Out-" by Robert Frost is the title, and it means the escape from daily work that the boy wished for and the reprieve he got in the form of the saw.

Paraphrase:

"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."   In this quote the author is saying the boy knew that if they cut his hand off he wouldn't be able to work, and he understood that that meant he couldn't support a family etc.






Connotation: When Frost uses the words " snarled and rattled" to describe the saw it has a negative connotation because when you describe wild animals you use words like snarled, and rattled has a ghostly connotation related to death and fear.






Attitude: The author's attitude is sympathetic to the boy and mournful of his death, especially when he says, "Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour"






Shift: There is a shift at the end of the poem when Frost says, "No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs." It is a really quick shift that happens because the boy has died, and to keep with the theme of the poem Frost depicts them as dispassionate about his death. They too are stuck in their cycle of work just like the boy was, so they must continue on.



Title Revisited: I still think the title was the boy's hope to break out of the cycle of work and do something, anything else.




Theme: The theme of the poem is that sometimes people trap themselves in their lives and daily routines, and there's no emotion behind anything they do so they might as well already be dead. The boy died from being trapped in the cycle of work he didn't want to do, which was kind of ironic but made sense because doing the same things over and over again can kill you.