Comparing Robert Frost's Out Out and Seamus Heany's Mid Term Break

Like a shovel to dirt as a pen to paper. In “Digging,” Seamus Heaney uses specific elements such as diction, and imagery to convey his meaning that children don’t always want to be like their past generations of men.

In Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out” an overwhelming theme of agony can be sensed as

“In the Loop” by Bob Hicok and “Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney are comparable in terms of their symbolic titles, speaker’s perspective, and tragic themes. These two poems diverge only in their physical structure, as neither has rhyme nor meter.

Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out –“ is about a boy who has his arm sawed off during work and asks his sister not to let the doctor amputate his arm, he then realizes he’s lost too much blood and then dies while doctors try to save him. After his death everyone else continues on with their work and lives. Frost uses a lot of end-stopped lines, enjambment, repetition and personification among others in his lines of poetry.

The poem is based on the story of a young boy who died whilst doing a

How much does an artist’s life affect the art they produce? One’s art certainly can be an expression of one’s surroundings and in this manner the surroundings are woven like a thread into their body of work. Seamus Heaney, born and raised in Northern Ireland, has grown up with many strong influences in his life that are visible in his poetry. As Robert Buttel claims in his article on Seamus Heaney “the imprint of this poet’s origins is indelibly fixed in his work” (180). Living in the “bogland” as Heaney has described Northern Ireland left an imprint on his poems, as he often depicts the lush green countryside and pastoral scenes of his youth. However, he also acknowledges his modern society.

conversation. It isn't like a poem at all. It says "By god the old man

A Comparison of The death of a hired man and Out, Out- by Robert Frost

Robert Frost tells a disturbing story in 'Out, Out, --', in which a little boy loses his life. The title of the poem leaves the reader to substitute the last word of the title, which some would assume would be out because of the repetition. The title is referring to the boy exiting the living world. Frost drags the reader's mind into the poem with the imagistic description of the tools and atmosphere the little boy is surrounded by.

This essay will analyse the challenges Seamus Heaney faced during the process of translation and writing, including his own conscious effort to make the play suitable for a modern audience. It will demonstrate how Heaney’s use of language and poetry aided in presenting modern ideas through the timbre of Irish/English diction and idiom in an attempt to make the play more ‘speakable’. Identifying features of Greek theatrical conventions and how Heaney used these to shape his play. Heaney also presents social and political issues through The Burial at Thebes in a way that resonates with a contemporary audience.

Robert Frost was an American poet that first became known after publishing a book in England. He soon came to be one of the best-known and loved American poets ever. He often wrote of the outdoors and the three poems that I will compare are of that “outdoors” type.

This year, I have studied several different texts, each of which tackle themes such as isolation, defeat, loss, desire and heroism in various engaging ways. For example, the first poem I studied, Out, Out-- immediately stood out to me due to the interesting choice of title. Having personally read Macbeth, it was clear that Robert Frost had been inspired by Macbeth’s speech after his wife committed suicide, for the only way to get the metaphorical blood of her hands was through death, using similar imagery to the boy’s hand in the poem. The boy too young and can’t cope with losing his hand; the work of both of their hands is too heavy, with the only way of escaping being defeat by death.

Philip Larkin (1922-1895) was an English novelist and poet, in 1955 he became a Liberian at the University of Hull. He would stay on working at the University until his death in 1895. During the first few months of his time working at the University he stayed in various bedsits, after this he moved into a flat which appears to be the same flat in which he wrote his poem “High Windows” which was first published in 1974. Clive James commented on this poem by saying: “The total impression of High Windows is of despair made beautiful.”1 The speaker of “High Windows” is most likely Larkin, although he is hiding behind a mask, not truly confirming his identity as he narrates on what he sees looking out of his window. “High Windows” was written in London during the time known as ‘The Summer of Love,’ this is when Bands such as ‘The Beatles’ brought around the craze of free thinkers, free love and drug use; no longer was the topic of sex whispered in the shadows.

The injustice of death is a theme often explored in the world of poetry; conveyed in a variety of contexts but nevertheless sharing the same theme. Death is universally acknowledged for being a sensitive subject, thus poets writing about death are able to cope with the inevitability and injustice of death through their writing. ‘Mid Term Break’, ‘Futility’, and ‘Tichborne’s elegy’ associates with the injustice of death from signifying the brevity of life itself whilst arguing the inevitable paradox of life. ‘Mid Term Break’ is an autobiographical poem told from Heaney’s personal recount when he is summoned from school, following the tragic event of his 4 year old brother, Christopher. ‘Futility’ is a poem told from the front-line of WWI, when he was a war officer. The poem shares the loss of a fellow soldier but then changes into a more philosophical in tone, as he is questioning the futility and inevitability of death, linking to war and its tragic outcomes. ‘Tichborne’s elegy’ is the most different in comparison to the other two poems. It’s told from the outlook from a religious martyr as he waits for his impending execution for partaking in the Babington plot against Queen Elizabeth I. In this poem, Tichborne simply laments on the brevity of his own life – which links to the brevity of lives discussed on the other two poems. ‘Tichborne’s elegy’ also differs from the other poems as he knew that he would be dead before anyone could read his work. A similarity between all

"Out, Out," by Robert Frost is a gruesomely graphic and emotional poem about the tragic end of a young boy's life. It is a powerful expression about the fragility of life and the fact that death can come at any time. Death is always devastating, but it is even more so when the victim is just a young boy. The fact that the boy's death came right before he could " Call it a day" (750) leads one to think the tragedy might have been avoided and there by forces the reader to think, "What if." This poem brings the question of mortality to the reader's attention and shows that death has no age limit.