Preview

Compare How Robert Frost and Wilfred Owen Communicate the Theme of Loss in ‘Out, Out-’ and “Disabled”.

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1639 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Compare How Robert Frost and Wilfred Owen Communicate the Theme of Loss in ‘Out, Out-’ and “Disabled”.
Compare how Robert Frost and Wilfred Owen communicate the theme of loss in ‘Out, Out-’ and “Disabled”.

In the two poems “Out, Out-” and “Disabled”, a similar theme of loss is portrayed. Both of these poems deal with the subject of physical loss, as both protagonists of these poems experience accidental amputation. Both Robert Frost and Wilfred Owen manage to captivate their audience’s attention, and also a certain degree of sympathy for the protagonists’ misfortune. They do this successfully, with the use of common literary techniques and linguistic skills, such as simile, metaphor, personification, contrast, and many more literary devices, which range from obvious to very subtle.

“Out, Out-”, written by American poet Robert Frost, is a very dark, death-related poem, which revolves around a boy, who experiences an accident which causes him to lose one of his limbs. This leads to his premature termination. After this incident occurs, people simply “move on with their affairs”, emphasizing the meaningless and worthlessness of one’s life. The title seems very ambiguous, but it is an allusion of a line from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. The soliloquy is spoken when Macbeth just realises that his wife, Lady Macbeth, passed away. Macbeth compares his wife’s life with a flickering candle that can be blown out in seconds – “Out, Out, brief candle!” This soliloquy emphasizes on the insignificance and vulnerability of life, which is also one of the centre meanings of “Out, Out-”.

The author starts off this poem with a quintessentially lovely scene, describing the “sweet scented stuff” being carried by the breeze, and the Vermont mountain ranges visible under the sunset. Despite starting off like so, the poem moves on to become dark and sinister. “And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled” in line 7, uses a combination of different techniques. The use of “snarled and rattled” personifies the buzz saw, creating the image that it is a ruthless,

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    However, when looking back at the poem, the author seems to have foreshadowed the outline of the poem and given us clues of what might be happening next. In the first line “The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard”. The author uses personification and personifies the buzz saw by giving it the actions of snarling and rattling as an angry person might. Personifying the buzz saw can also give us some kind of imaginative effect. And because he uses the word “snarled” we can predict that something unfortunate is going to happen since it's usually used in a negative sense.…

    • 102 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Then as the poem progresses it turns inti something even more stranger. His only desire is to “get out of that crackling air,” the air whistling with bullets coming the other way, what he calls “his terror’s touchy…

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    “Out,Out-“ and Bredon Hill are two very different poems which both deal with the theme of unexpected death. “Out,Out-“, by Robert Frost, is the story of the death of a boy caused by a buzz-saw. The title, “Out,Out-“, was taken by Frost from Shakespeare’s Macbeth – these words were used to express Macbeth’s grief at the death of his wife, Lady Macbeth, saying “out,out brief candle”, which enforces the idea that a life has prematurely ended, which echoes the theme and narrative of the poem. However, in Bredon Hill the title does not have any particular significance to the theme of unexpected death; rather it is the name of a place where the persona and his girlfriend liked to spend their time together.…

    • 1591 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    4. Robert Frost’s “Out, Out-‘” resembles the medieval folk ballad, “Sir Patrick Spence,” in its theme. Both poems are relaying a message about death. In Frost’s poem, the boy acknowledges the fact that he is going to die when he realizes he is losing a lot of blood. In “Sir Patrick Spence,” the sailor realizes he is coming face to face with death when he reads the letter the king has sent to him. Both of the protagonists in the poems are on the verge of dying a sudden, unexpected death.…

    • 2098 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost, an American author, wrote “Out, Out” to reflect his New England background and to entertain and teach his readers about life in general. Throughout his life he has been honored and awarded, he has also wrote quite a few poems, and has had more than his share of pain and suffering.…

    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    An unknown author once wrote "Never take life too seriously; after all, no one gets out of it alive". When reading this quote, there can almost be an immediate connection between two very good works of writing: Macbeth's "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" speech from Shakespeare's tragedy, Macbeth, and the poem "Out, Out --" by Robert Frost. Both allude to the idea that a single life, in its totality, denotes nothing, and eventually, everyone's candle of life is blown out. However, each poet approaches this idea from opposite perspectives. Frost writes of a young, innocent boy whose life ends suddenly and unexpectedly. His poem is dry and lacks emotion from anyone except the young boy. Whereas the demise of Shakespeare's character, Macbeth, an evil man, has been anticipated throughout the entire play. Through these writings, we are able gather a little more insight as to how these poets perhaps felt about dying and life itself.…

    • 537 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Wilfred Owen Speech

    • 895 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Ok what I have got here today is a detailed speech and I intend to explain two poems “Disabled” and “Dolce et Decorum est.”, both written by Wilfred Owen. I would choose these two poems to be in an anthology because I found the poems to be very dramatic and extremely detailed. Owen intends to shock us by demonstrating what a soldier might expect in a situation between life and death. He is not afraid to show his own feelings. Wilfred Owen is an anti-war poet and expresses his ideas and feelings through various themes and poetic devices which I will be discussing throughout this speech.…

    • 895 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the song “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles, there is a lonely, sad woman who dies and is readily forgotten as she has nobody to care about her. How many people do we see out on the street that will just become "another dead body?" Eleanor Rigby really puts this into perspective that there are lonely people in this world living their lives serving others without being acknowledged. Eleanor is waiting for someone, but she is scarred in her heart by her lonely life. Sadly enough, she is an afterthought even in her death, as Father McKenzie writes her sermon in his socks, late at night. The theme of the song is that keeping the up the illusion isn’t always worth it. The literary devices demonstrating this theme are allegory, repetition, and imagery.…

    • 802 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The perspective of life is led by what the imagination captures. For some individuals, connecting to life can be just as difficult as a five year old trying to run a marathon. “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…” (Bible, 1979). The power that shapes this expression can help anyone achieve great things or just waste one 's life altogether. That is why I think that literature found in songs, plays, stories, and poems helps all of us make a connection with life. Literature gives us a broader perspective in our imagination. The poem, "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is one of those pieces of literature that help us connect to life. This paper will explain why "The Road Not Taken" captured my attention as a reader, evaluate the poem by using the reader-response approach, and finally describe said approach.…

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    He tone the poet uses in ‘Disabled’ is quite bitter and regretful; he shows this by using the past to show a certain sadness and pain he is going through. The quotation ‘About this time Town used to swing so gay’ suggests that it doesn’t anymore. Whereas in ‘Out, out-‘the tone used is quite calming and eerie at the beginning. For example, the line ‘Under the sunset far into Vermont’ lulling the reader into a false sense of security. This suddenly changes to a tone of panic in the line ‘Don’t let him, sister!’ Therefore the suffering here is shown to be unexpected. Frost shows that suffering is something to be afraid of in ’Out, out-‘as the boy cries ‘don’t let him cut my hand off’. The panic shown by the boy owing to the thought of losing a limb indicates that he is afraid of losing his hand, due to the suffering the loss of a limb will bring to him in the future. This is shown in ‘Disabled’ as Owen shows the effect that a loss of limb can have on both physical and mental suffering. Owen’s view of suffering can contrast with Frosts portrayal of it. In disabled it would seem that although suffering is something to be feared, the narrator has learned to live alongside it- despite how hard it is. In the line ‘ Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes’ Owen suggests that his disability, and the effects it…

    • 1046 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Like so many artists, Frost drew from his personal experiences as inspiration for his poetry. Frost is described by biographers as having “links between the events of Frost’s own life – a gothic chronicle of disasters – and the poetry”. (McQuade et al., 1999, p. 1901) Frost lost his father at a very early age. He was only 11 year old at the time of his father’s death. “But it was not only the early death of his father that convinced Frost of the evil in existence. His own first child died in infancy; his only son committed suicide; one daughter died after childbirth, and another was mentally ill; his embittered wife refused on her deathbed to admit him to her room”. (McQuade et al., 1999, p. 1901) Frost experienced a great deal of loss throughout his life and that loss is reflected in his work. That loss, however, is not always easily uncovered. Frost often masked the pain in his writings with symbolism and metaphors.…

    • 1293 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In ‘Disabled’ the veteran notices how the women’s eyes ‘passed from him to the strong men who were whole’. The ‘strong men’ act as a juxtaposition for his present condition, clarifying his fragile and weak state. Also the simile ‘like some queer disease’ make him seen like an outcast from society because he is unable to walk let alone carry out menial tasks. Confined to his wheelchair, he becomes increasing isolated, as more women avert their gazes to more physically able men. Conversely, in Anthem For Doomed Youth, the home front are more passive and contrite towards the soldiers’ disabilities. The boys express their anguish through the ‘holy glimmers of goodbyes’. The euphemism of goodbyes can be taken as giving a final farewell to the deceased. It can also be interpreted as a final farewell to the former lives of joy the soldier’s had prior to the war. In both poems, the soldiers are no longer treated as equals and can never fully integrate themselves back into society’s…

    • 1002 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poem “Disabled” by Wilfred Owen is about a young soldier who has lost his legs during the First World War. Owen wrote the poem whilst he was being treated for shell shock at the Craiglockhart War Hospital. It is very likely that he would have seen lots of soldiers pass through his ward with severe injuries such as missing limbs.…

    • 824 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Loss refers to the unrecoverable removal of someone or something that people unanticipated mostly. It leads to permanent alienation from something or someone. Throughout the American literature, scholars have explained the theme of loss comprehensively either through images, words but most importantly by combining both. The loss that these images and words depict in these are either that of reason, passion, or pride but most fatal the loss of life. In artistic terms, the theme loss is usually symbolic of something great perhaps a lesson that the audience needs to learn. Whether in poetry, films or books, the theme comes out as an overwhelming part of art that creates a spark and life. Though some are not necessary and painful, the loss is an integral part of thematic devices that make American literature stand out. The paper discusses the meanings and the message behind this overwhelming theme so as to create an understanding of its use in literature.…

    • 812 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Explore the concepts of success and failure in A Grammarian’s Funeral and one other poem by Robert Browning.…

    • 1383 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays