Tone: "Out, Out" By Robert Frost

In the poem, "Out-Out" by Robert Frost; the speaker has a somber, serious, regretful attitude, an ironic tone, and a vivid descriptive voice towards the events occurring throughout the poem. He (the speaker) is shown as a witness to the story that takes place. Frost uses this dramatic take on a chain of events to guide you through a series of emotions as the poem develops.

The first thing I noticed in reading the poem was the calm and serene atmosphere that the speaker was describing. "The buzz saw snarled and rattled" in the first line depicts ferocity as if he was trying to foreshadow the saw 's role in the poem. The speaker goes on to describe a nostalgic, happy scene in the country, on a homestead in the mountains of Vermont. He creates this mood by using words and phrases such as "sweet-scented stuff" and "breeze drew across it". "Five mountain ranges...." and "Under the sunset far into Vermont" depicts the location as in the wilderness up in the mountains of Vermont at dusk, where he (the speaker) and the boy were about to call it a day.

He appears to be laboring along side the boy, chopping wood in their yard, just before the boy 's sister calls out to them "supper". This implies that the speaker has a close relationship with the other characters in the poem, hinting that he is in fact the boy 's father. Describing the boy as a "big boy, doing a man 's work although child at heart" and talk of pleasing him by giving him the half hour off work that he enjoys further implies that the speaker knows the boy well and has a close relationship to him.

The poem grows more somber as the speaker starts to reveal a feeling of regret. The phrase "Call it a day, I wish they would have said... to please the boy by giving him the half hour that a boy counts so much when saved from work" depicts strong emotion of regret, because if they had ended work a half hour earlier then the boy may not have died. It creates a sense of irony in the turn of events because the boy 's