‘Out, Out–‘ by Robert Frost (1916)

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow soliloquy from Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1623)

It’s a rare two-fer, folks! These two works are intertwined for me, so now I am intertwining them for you.

‘Out, Out—’ isn’t my favorite poem (I don’t have one), but it truly is the one that I return to more than any other. Those last two lines, man. Those last two lines. (Don’t you dare skip to the last two lines! You need to read the whole thing for them to work!)

But why is this poem associated with my arm-band? A brief history:

‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ begins one of William Shakespeare’s most well-known soliloquies. It occurs at the end of Macbeth, after the main character learns his wife has offed herself and while armies are approaching that will kill him and everyone he loves, and also, one assumes, trample his beautiful landscape. It’s a very fancy way of saying, “Well, life’s pretty stupid, in’it?”

I didn’t get the tattoo because I think life is stupid. Rather, it was another reminder of the immortal connection that binds humankind. In college, I’d had a Very Bad Night—the kind of night that makes one doubt there is any true goodness in humanity. Of course, since I am me, I spent the following weeks self-soothing by diving into Shakespeare’s tragedies. When I came across this soliloquy, I could not believe how perfectly it summed up my emotional state at that exact moment. There I was in a coffee shop in McMinnville, Oregon at the turn of the 21st century, and yet these words from 400 freaking years ago, written by a dude in England, met me as intimately as anything could. It was like this character reacted to my experience in a manner more perfectly than I could ever have done myself. Ugh, it’s so good.

Robert Frost thought so, too*. The title of his poem comes from this soliloquy:

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

If you catch the reference, then Frost’s poem is spoiled for you from the beginning, which is kind of a dick move.**

Short Stuff:

• Robert Frost and I have the same birthday!
• Almost as notably, he holds the record for most Pulitzer Prizes in poetry (four).
• According to one of my seventh-graders, William Shakespeare is a “famous playwright and architect.”
• Because of all them witches, you can’t say “Macbeth” in a theater or else the production will be cursed. You have to refer to it as “The Scottish play.”

Topics in Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Death; candles; syllables; thespians; idiots; nihilism

Topics in ‘Out, Out–‘

Death; buzz-saws; child labor (for real, I’m not being glib here like I am with the buzz-saws or half the Shakespeare stuff.)

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Speech: “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow”

(from Macbeth, spoken by Macbeth)

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

–William Shakespeare

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‘Out, Out–‘

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

–Robert Frost

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*As did William Faulkner, whose The Sound and the Fury title comes from this soliloquy.
**And whoops, I just spoiled it for you I guess, but you’re still not allowed to skip to the last two lines.