Robert Frost and Langston Hughes are American poets, but their poetic style and themes are quite different. Frost is known for his realistic portrayal of the rural life of New England. Hughes is normally associated with the Black Power movement of the sixties in America. Both are prolific writers. Frost’s poems reflect the complexity of social life, often turning into philosophical discussions. He writes in simple and colloquial style. Langston Hughes tries to establish racial friendship and brotherhood through his poems. A critical appreciation of “Out, Out” by Frost and “The Weary Blues” by Hughes to highlight their similarities and differences in their approaches to death is the focus of this paper.
Frost, like Macbeth, looks at the short duration of life, and how callously the society takes it. He knows that human life is only like that of the brief life of a candle. Still man is not able to realize the value of it. Death brings no tears in modern life. This is the essence of his poem, “Out, Out”. The poem is based on the death of the son of the poet’s friend and neighbor. The boy’s hand was cut while he was working with a buzz-saw: “The buzz saw snarled and rattled” (Frost).
The poet takes this tragic event to show how insignificant is human life for some people in this modern world. In this industrialized world the focus is only on money. The boy is put to hard work, denying him freedom and the joy of growing up. The poem also shows how, like a slave, a boy is treated in this society. The time is twilight and the boy is still working with his saw, “Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart”, says the poet (Frost).
There is no mention of his parents showing any concern for him in the poem. It is his sister who comes to call him for the supper. Frost personalizes the saw and says that it knows the supper better than the hands of the boy: “As if it meant to prove saws know what supper meant” (Frost). The life of the boy has become mechanical. His hands move automatically, even though he has lost the sensations due to overwork. When his sister calls him, the hand failed to stop the work.
The result is that the saw “Leaped out at the boy’s hand” and thus the hand is lost (Frost). He requests his sister to see that his hand will not be amputated. However, the doctor is not able to save his life. The entire poem, presented through a narrator, concentrates on the misery of the boy. The irony is that though he dies, the speaker says that “And they, since they / Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs” (Frost). The work should go on; one cannot remain lamenting for the loss of a life. Frost is very modern in his attitude to life.
Langston Hughe’s poem, “The Weary Blues”, similarly depicts the end of a black man, though it is not made very explicit in the poem. Jazz and Blues are original to Afro-American life and tradition. In the poem the speaker says that he listens to the blues being played by a Negro with his “ebony hands” on the “ivory keys” of a piano (Hughes). The music is very sad, “Coming from a black man’s soul” (Hughes).
Langston uses blues mainly because it is closely related to the black culture and it stands as a metaphor to the social conditions of the black people. “I got the weary blues / And I can’t be satisfied”, says the black (Hughes). It is the disgust and the dissatisfaction of the blacks which the piano cries out. The black hand on the white keys of the piano signifies the black man’s resentment against the white man’s racial attitude.
Like the saw in Frost’s poem, the piano symbolizes cruelty and torture, leading to death. The “piano moan with melody”, says the poet (Hughes). It gives out a melancholy tone. Thus, the desire for death is implicit in the boy in “Out, Out” and in the black in “The Weary Blues”. The black says “I wish I had died” (Hughes). Whether he actually dies at the end, like Frost’s boy, is not clear: “He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead”, says the poet (Hughes). Langston Hughes wants to show that even in his sleep the music plays the melancholic song of a black man’s strong protest against the social discrimination in America.
This was the situation in America during the days of Harlem renaissance. The Afro-Americans felt that they were denied of all the rights and the joys of life. Therefore, the last line of the poem is important. Even if he wakes up in the morning, he cannot live like others, as he has lost all the sensations of a man. When he says “Ain’t got nobody in the world” (Frost), it echoes the condition of the boy in “Out, Out”. The sense of alienation is central to both poems.
The life of the boy in “Out, Out” is a tale told by the speaker, which, at the end of the poem, looks insignificant. Frost succeeds in showing the brief life of the boy on one side, and on the other side, he points out how quickly the people forget everything and get back to their work. The indifference of the society to human suffering is the essence of the poem. Similarly, Hughes depicts the black tradition and the discriminations suffered by the Afro-Americans through the instrument of piano.
Frost is very outright in depicting the events towards death. Hughes uses music as the medium to express the inner feelings of the victim and Frost uses the buzz-saw. Both Frost and Hughes can be considered as modern poets, in the sense that they depict the twentieth century experience in their poems. Frost does not directly deal with the modern technological life, but, as in the case of the boy in the poem, its impact reflected in the poem is surely modern. The general indifference to life shown by the society is beautifully expressed by both poets. Truth is vital to both the poets.
Reference
Frost, Robert. “Out, Out”. Web.
Hughes, Langston. “The Weary Blues”. Web.