Death is everywhere, yet very few people notice it. The poem “Out, Out–,” by Robert Frost, is about a boy who is chopping wood and, due to a momentary lapse in concentration, cuts his hand and bleeds to death. The people around him are initially surprised by what happened, but immediately continue with their daily lives. Robert Frost uses illusion, structure, and imagery to make his poetry convey criticism of how little humans pay attention to the dead. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Robert Frost cleverly named the poem “Out, Out–” as an illusion of the line from Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, “Out, out brief” candle” (5.5.23). The poem reflects the mood of Macbeth's quote. In the play, Macbeth learns of his wife's death and coldly responds, "She should have died hereafter./ There was a time for such a word" (5.5.17-18). Robert Frost writes this poem in reaction to that indifferent response. He describes the boy's bystanders as careless: "[...] And they, since they were not the dead ones, went back to their business" (31, 33-34). This paints them in a very negative light. Viewers should have cared more about what happened to this boy, just as Macbeth should have cared more about what happened to his wife. This poem also creates a scenario very similar to that of Macbeth. In both literary texts, the victims are seen as innocent and their deaths are not truly their fault. In Macbeth the wife goes mad and in the poem the boy plays with tools he really shouldn't be using. The poem describes the action as “[…] big boy/ Doing man's work, though he is a child at heart–” (23-24). The boy wasn't old enough to use the saw. He wasn't a man yet. Robert Frost's delusion of Macbeth's story creates a dynamic twist to his critique of human negligence towards death. Robert Frost structures his poem using a blank verse form and placing punctuation throughout the poem at key points to enhance how the criticism is transferred to the reader. . The poem is in blank verse as the vast majority of the lines are ten syllables long and follow an iambic pattern. This can be seen very clearly in the verse: “Ban thus, I wish they had said so” (9). This line has both 10 syllables and all the others are stressed. This poem uses the blank verse structure as it fits better into normal speech and gives the poet more freedom to express his ideas to the reader. Robert Frost also uses punctuation to stop the reader at certain points to emphasize specific ideas and create suspense. A major example from the text where Robert Frost emphasizes an idea and creates suspense through punctuation is immediately after the hand is severed, "[...] But the hand!/The boy's first cry" (18) . The exclamation point after "hand" lets the reader know that the boy's hand has been severed from his arm and creates a sense of suspense about how the boy will react. If Robert Frost hadn't put an exclamation point there, the reader would have gone straight to the next verse without understanding and feeling the gravity of the situation. Towards the end of the poem, when the boy is dying, the situation is shown in fragments: “And then – the watcher on his wrist was frightened./ No one believed it. They listened to his heart./ Little – less – nothing! – and that ended” (30-32). The dashes create a lot of suspense in this section of the poem. Although there are not many emotions, the stress is still there. This helps engage the.