The Last Night Comparative Essay

Compare how language and structure are used to present death and despair in Out, Out and The Last Night “The Last Night” is a passage about two young boys being transported to a concentration camp, it is described through many devices using death and despair. Similar to “Out, Out” which is a poem describing a boy who’s hand gets cut off by a buzz-saw, it was written in 1915 and takes place in 1910, similar to the time when “The Last Night” takes place, also it is similar to “The Last Night” as in many ways it refers to war, death and despair. In “The Last Night” and “Out, Out” the characters experience different routes but both lead onto the same road of despair and eventually death.
“The Last Night” is the title of an extract from Charlotte
The doctor when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’ So. But the hand was gone already.” Here just as in “The Last Night”, the reader is shown the brevity of life and its frailty. The use of “So.” in my opinion is quite effective as it is a solemn reminder of the briefness of life and how it slips away in a short time. In my opinion the sentence “But the hand was gone already.” has two meanings: “already” emphasises that life slips away in the blink of an eye before we realise but mostly the sentence emphasises, as with “The Last Night”, how we try to avoid death as much as we can and “[dig] in [our] heels”, suggested by the boy screaming to save his hand, but all of that is for nothing as “the hand [is] gone already”; we try and live as long as we can but this sentence reminds the reader that all this effort is for nothing as we all will die and we have little control over the length of our
As we know Frost has experienced the terrors of World War 1 and therefore will engage the reader to experience how suddenly life ends: “As he swung toward them”, Frost suggests this by using “swung” which is an unexpected, sudden and uncontrolled movement indicating how unprepared the boy was for this event.
On the other hand Faulks suggests a more despairing and slow death:
“Many of the adults refused to drink because they knew it meant breakfast, and therefore departure.”
Many of us try to last till the end and try to cling into time/life. The writer here connects a simple verb “drinking” to “departure” which ultimately means death. From this we recognise not just the fragility of life but its finiteness and terseness and it’s gradualness as the sympathy built from the fact that the adults have so little they cling onto life but purely refuse to drink causes us to see that no matter how rich or poor life is what’s most valuable, also the Deportees know that death will strike soon creates despair as well as showing how slow death can be. In “Out, out” Frost employs blank verse