“Out, Out----“

1. There was only one word that I did not recognized, which was Ether.

2. The speaker is this outsider who is watching this little boy do all this work, which he is struggling with. He can barley handle this work load because it is meant for a man not a little child. “ Since he was old enough to know, big boy, doing a man’s work, through a child heart.” The speaker could have been this child’s sister, the one he cries out to when they want to cut off his arm.

3. The situation is that there is this hard working little boy who works all the time and does jobs that are a huge challenge for him. He does them anyway though. Then this doctor comes to their house and wants to cut off his arm. He cries out to his sister to tell her no, but the doctor went through with the pursedure. This ended in the little boy’s death. “No more to build on there.” This means that since the little boy has passed there was going to be no more building, no harder jobs that would be completed.

4. This is happening in the 40’s or 50’s. The three characters are the little boy, who works like an older man, the sister, and the doctor. This is all happening when the little boy is done working (building) and it is placed at his house.

5. The tone is more of a depressing, angry, and very fast paced. They give you very little time to explain the characters and go straight into the death of the little boy. At the beginning everything is pleasant and dandy, but then when the doctor arrives it is as if everything had gone down hill right then and there. Nothing had happened according to plan and in a way the tone was shocking.

6. Important phrases include:
“ That boy counts so much when saved from work.”
“ Doing a man’s work, through a child at heart.”
“ The doctor put him in the dark of ether.”
“ Little less nothing! And that ending it.”
“ No more to build on there.”

7. The theme of this poem is uncertainty is life. That life could end at any minute and that for this little boy it was a terrible loss of talent and potential. He dedicated his life to do a man’s job and was wiped out in return.

8. The Author achieves this by making the boy so irresistible and hard working that when this tragedy happens you feel so sad. You want to ask so many questions because since the author made the little boy such a hard worker and was pushed to grow older made him more of a great kid who didn’t deserve what had happened to him.