Poets and writers use different literary devices for communicating their messages to the intended audience. This paper will consider two poems that communicate similar messages but are different in their approach and style. The poem, “Out, Out” by Robert Frost and “Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes deal with the theme of death, the state of neglect and rejection. The former describes an accidental death while the latter alludes to death by the emptiness and worthlessness one feels. However, while sharing some similarities in the context of style, both poems drastically differ from each other in terms of mood, style, use of language and imagery.
In the poem “Out, Out” Frost describes a scene where a boy is working with a saw to cut logs. The imagery that the author uses is a blend of awe and beauty, by first referring to the saw “snarled and rattled” and then making the allusion to the “sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.” (Frost-1, 3). The poet repeats the snarling and rattling in the seventh line to foreshadow the violent death of the boy whose hand gets chopped off by the saw and he succumbs to subsequent loss of blood. Again, Frost deploys vivid imagery by a most effective use of language when he writes, “half as if to keep the life from spilling.” (Frost-21, 22) On the other hand, Hughes, in his poem “The Weary Blues” describes a dejected Negro crooning a song to his lonely and empty soul. The writer captures the mood very effectively by using imageries like “pale dull pallor of an old gas light” and “ebony hands on each ivory key…..piano moan with melody.” (Hughes-5, 10). The readers do get a good sense of the worthlessness the black man feels and the ultimate dejection that makes him want to die. While Frost uses a mix of awe and beauty in imagery to reveal his theme, Hughes achieves this by employing a writing style and imagery that strikingly illustrate the mood and atmosphere.
Though traces of modernistic style become evident in both the aforesaid poems, each author is unique in the way he uses this particular technique of writing. While Frost chooses to use a rural setting in the woods, Hughes places the Negro in Lenox Avenue. Another trait of modernistic writing, which is allusiveness, is also evident in both the poems. The former alludes to the boy’s imminent death through the images like “he lay and puffed his lips out with his breath” or “the watcher at his pulse took fright” whereas the latter resorts mainly to dialogues for referring to the character’s state of mind. (Frost-29, 30). A few examples of this can be seen in lines like: “Ain’t got nobody but myself” and “I wish that I had died.” The use of slangs to imply the urban setting and the repetition of some lamentations to accentuate the man’s feelings etc are also noteworthy in Hughes’ poem. Another major difference in the writing is that Frost’s poem informs of the boy’s death in a straightforward manner while Hughes does not make it clear whether the man is actually dead or he is sleeping “like rock or a man that’s dead.” (Hughes-35).
Poetry is an art form that offers immense possibilities for writers to communicate their messages and meanings to their audience. Many writers use the same style or literary devices to achieve this objective. However, each poet has his or her unique way in expressing his or her ideas as evidenced from the discussion of above two poems. Both Robert Frost and Langston Hughes use modernistic style to reveal the same theme of death, rejection and dejection in their poems but despite the similarities their poems share both have deployed individual techniques unique to each as the examples from their poetries show.