The buzz saw in “‘Out, Out—’” is a complex symbol. Most basically, its capacity to inflict serious and deadly injuries—as shown in the narrative—symbolizes sudden and violent death. Yet even before the injury, the association between the saw and death is hinted by the mention that the saw “made dust” (Line 2) because of the traditional association between dust and death. More conceptually, the saw represents the encroachment of the industrial world into the agricultural domain; by extension, then, the saw represents the threat to tradition by innovation. Also, since the saw “snarl[s] and rattle[s]” (Line 1)—that is, sounds both animal and mechanical, like something it is and is not—it epitomizes the poetic tension between figurative and literal representation.

The poem’s symbolic message relies on the fact that it is a child, not an adult, who dies. Traditionally, youth represents innocence. Yet notice this is a “big boy / Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart” (Lines 23-24). In other words, while still very much an innocent, we know it is a matter of time before he is an adult and no longer an innocent. As lamentable as that circumstance may be, still worse is the loss of life even before innocence is lost, which is the case of this boy.