A boy is out doing a man’s work with a chainsaw, when his sister comes to call him in for supper. Suddenly, the chainsaw leaps and cuts deep into his hand. The boy looks at the bleeding gash and begs his sister, “Don’t let him cut my hand off— / The doctor when he comes.” But before long the boy’s pulse begins to drop: “Little, less,” soon “nothing.” And the boy is dead. There’s “no more to build on there,” so his family turns away: “And they, since they / Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.”
That is the narrative that Robert Frost unfolds in “Out, Out —” and it is, I believe, emblematic of his understanding of life. Danger is everywhere; the darkness is always crowding in. You cannot rely on others to sustain you. They have their own lives to live, and they return to them readily, no matter what sorrows might befall you. You have only one pillar of sustenance in this world: yourself. Frost elaborates his view of the world with considerable art.