How do the writers of ‘Out, out’ and ‘The Bright Lights of Sarajevo’ use

language and structure to present coping with change in their poems?

Both ‘The Bright Lights of Sarajevo’ and ‘Out Out’ present the idea of coping with change by
depicting different ways that people can adapt to troubling situations. Tony Harrison
approaches this by displaying his idea of coping with change through civilians adapting to a
new way of living due to war, the poet uses one night in the city to present a
straightforward, graphic recount of the horrors of war that belong to the lives of the city’s
innocent civilians. However, integrated through the tragedy is an underlying glimmer of
hope, that Harrison shows in the form of a flowering romance between two youths.
Harrison was a news journalist who was present during the siege of Sarajevo in the years
1992-96 and saw the lives of many innocent people being taken away through his time in
the Bosnian War. Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, contained many civilians
of different ethnicities, Serbian, Croats, and Bosnians. Harrison seeks to give a voice to the
voiceless and he shows this in his intense form of writing. Robert Frost approaches the idea
of coping with change by saying that people will just move on and forget about what has
happened. This is different to Harrison’s depiction of the same idea as he does not move on,
he sticks it out and conquers the problem at hand. Out Out tells the story of a young boy
who dies after his hand is severed by a "buzz-saw", set in Vermont 1916, and based on a
true accident that happened to Frost’s friend’s son. This upsetting story of a child losing
their life in such a shocking way, questions life values head on. Frost’s poem zooms in on
societies reactions to death opposed to the idea of death itself.

The poem's title "bright lights" symbolize hope in dark times, as light can be seen to
represent hope. The idea of “bright lights” usually refers to partying and glee. But war-torn
Sarajevo doesn't have a lot of glamour and excitement to go around. The Brights of Sarajevo
opens with, “After the hours that Sarajevan’s pass.” Harrison starts his poem off by using
irony to represent how war flips people’s lives upside down, he shows this in the poem as
the civilians in Sarajevo feel safe at night and afraid during the day, which completely
contrasts the norm. The dark represents the unknown, however the Sarajevan’s savour this
as they cannot be seen by snipers and soldiers; the dark symbolises protection as these
people use the ‘cover of darkness’ to escape detection.

Charlie Howard
Harrison writes the poem in three stanzas of different lengths, he uses a rhyme scheme
throughout, and he makes sure that all the couplets rhyme, apart from the final line in the
first stanza. Harrison also uses enjambment, to copy the narration of a story saying that life
must go on even in the toughest of times. The poet’s meticulous use of structure and rhyme
is not unintentional. Harrison uses the first stanza to solely talk about the bleak, harsh
realities of life during the siege of Sarajevo. The second stanza introduces the story of the
romance between the teens, and the third stanza, which is the shortest, finishes on a very
sanguine bend. Meaning that the mood of the poem moves from one of a negative feeling
to a more positive one. Consequently, the use of a rhyming couplet usually brings a
lightening mood to a poem, even though this poem is all about a war-torn city and death
this rhyme scheme shows how there is always joy and positivity to be found during despair.
Harrison uses enjambement to show how the day to day lives of the people in Sarajevo and
the war have merged together and are now flowing as one.

In the first stanza, the poet analyses how day to day activities become such challenging
events. Harrison uses powerful language to portray how the Sarajevan’s struggle to get their
day-to-day supplies. Obtaining water procured difficult manual labour and, gathering very
few grams of bread has been compared to the death sentence, in the quote “dodging
snipers on the way”. Gas canisters were wheeled around in prams, telling the reader that
they were as important as babies. Harrison also presents bread as gold, as gold is weighed in
grams, “grams of bread”. He uses strong verbs like, “queueing, struggling, and dodging,” in
order to add extra severity to the idea already being described by Harrison.

Harrison shows that even though they are living in a dangerous conflict zone, teenage boys
and girls still want to go out and talk to their friends. He does not fight or turn down these
actions. He seems to like and be encouraged by the actions and courage of the Sarajevan’s,
as we can see throughout this poem. The use of ‘stroller’ repeatedly, describes how
everything is precious to the Sarajevan, and the alliteration in “stroller’s stride” gives us an
idea that these teenagers are free to do what they want, as they have nowhere else to be.
Without light, people cannot see ethnicity, so everyone comes together due to their being
no racism apparent in Sarajevo. The poet emphasises this by putting in three different ways
of saying bread, one for each language in Bosnia. Further portraying the idea that in the
dark, it doesn’t matter who you are you will not be discriminated.

Charlie Howard
The poet uses grotesque imagery in the Bright Lights of Sarajevo to capture the tough times
of war. In the quote, “Serb mortars massacred the bread shop queue and blood dunked
crusts of shredded bread.” Harrison uses a semantic field to show the reader how repulsive
the scene would’ve been if he cannot bring himself to write about it. The use of the words
“massacred” and “blood-dunked” shows how gory these times were and the horror of war
in Sarajevo. The idea of a bread shop being massacred is unusual as a bread shop should be
a peaceful place to go as bread is a necessity to survival, this just reinforces the idea that
war flips life upside down.

Harrison now looks at the peculiar things that would happen during the siege. A boy would
bump into a girl on purpose as a “flirtatious ploy”, and whatever she said back to him, he
would light up a match or lighter to show each other it was them and spend the night
together. These acts of love put with the mysterious use of language “dark shape”; “tender
radar” shows the poet understands the irony being used. These compulsory and war-based
activities paints a picture of a military operation, which shows the reality of the setting.

Harrison portrays the extreme circumstances of war through many different linguistical
devices, in this case he uses a hyperbole. “Fragments of the splintered Pleiades, sprinkled on
this death-deep, death-dark wells.” The use of a hyperbole shows the extreme
circumstances the Sarajevan’s are living in by exaggerating the extent of destruction
inflicted upon the city, as if it was as deep as a well. Harrison uses consonance to show the
harsh tone and the severity of the situation the people in Sarajevo are stuck in. The phrase
‘splintered Pleiades’ means broken sky; it is stating that the war has disrupted the balance
of the universe.

The poem ends with its shortest stanza yet, which gives the reader an idea of sympathy and
warmth. The alliteration of “coffee in a candle-lit café” joint with the sentimental comments
of ‘sharing’ and ‘holding hands’, makes the reader think of an old-school romance. By doing
this Harrison ends on a hopeful note of events turning over for the better, and civilian life
starting to go back to normal, further portraying the idea of coping with change. This idea of
hope in a dark situation can also be found throughout Out, Out, however Frost negates this

Charlie Howard
idea and portrays and underlying theme that life must go on through his links to Macbeth
and how he looks at the brevity of life.

“Out, out” tells the tragic tale of a boy injured in an accident. Just as he is about to go in for
his dinner, his arm gets caught in a buzz saw and he loses his hand, and then dies from loss
of blood. The poem is a constant reminder of the delicacy of life, and that tragedy can
happen to anyone despite age, race, sex, it doesn’t matter, it can happen to anyone. But
Harrison doesn’t just focus on the death of this boy, Harrison also focuses on the way life
moves on after people die, looking at the true value of life in the first place, by looking at
how people cope with change.

Robert Frost deliberately starts off his poem by painting a rather mundane picture, to entice
the reader into thinking nothing bad will happen. By doing this, Frost can show the
abruptness and apparent absurdity of which death can strike. Apart from the mentions of
the buzz saw’s “snarling” and “rattling” sound, the opening of the poem is almost
picturesque and set in an area far from a city. The wind is “sweet-scented” and “five
mountain ranges” are set behind the boy’s home. Even with the buzz-saw’s threatening
noise is painted as a piece of the landscape, as its sound seems to go on all day without any
stops.

Frost consistently portrays the idea of a normal day throughout the poem, “And nothing
happened: day was all but done.” Means that there is very little work left to do, giving the
reader a sense that there is a tragedy that is to come, the boy wishes that the father had
“called it a day” before, because if he had of done that, then the boy would not have died.
This is Frost’s way of showing the reader the fine margins between living and being dead,
also showing that the littlest of decisions can lead to the largest of problems.

It's during this point, that everything becomes bad. The extent of the importance of this
event is reflected by the child’s mockery, he begins to laugh and points to the sky, “the life
from spilling.” The boy’s laugh is key, as it subtly shows how precious life is, that at one
moment you could be laughing and the next you’re dead. The other people in the poem find
it difficult to comprehend what is happening. Just like the day’s work, the boy is dead. Frost
is undermining the idea that life can end in the blink of an eye. Subsequently arguing against
the value of life in the first place, as it can be ended so easily. Frost shows no kind words or

Charlie Howard
mourning to this loss, all he infers is that death is inevitable, and you will never know when
it will strike, but eventually it will.

Poignantly, in order to further question the value of life, Frost ensures the other characters
present in the poem do not dwell on the death of the boy. So “since they / Were not the
one dead,” they go back to their day to day lives. The idea of the poem is to portray how
meaningless life is, lightly questioning the meaning of the boy’s life in the first place, and
even why he had to die. Frost also proposes that all human life is meaningless and
senselessness as everyone will die sooner or later.

"Out, out" is made of a single stanza and does not cohere to any specific rhyme scheme. The
singular stanza does correlate to the poem, even though the lack of poetic structure does fit
the title "Out, out" which is very mundane, however the poem does entail (e.g., big rhymes
and flowery metaphors). Frost’s aim with the poem is to lead the reader into a false sense of
security, so that the death of the boy feels much more spontaneous and sadder to the
reader. Also the big block of text makes the poem structured like a prose, a narrative that
uses basic words and grammar. The form of the poem seems to correlate with the poem’s
mood during the first few lines, leading the reader to think that nothing eventful will occur.
This is obviously not true, and something does happen. And as this bad thing happens the
prose structured poem makes this tragedy seem even sadder.

Harrison structures his poem in blank verse (an unrhymed iambic pentameter), this adds to
the idea of leading the reader into a false sense of security as he portrays the idea of normal
and day to day life. By using blank verse, it a gives a mandatory sense to the poem, meaning
that everything always goes the same. The predictability of the lines reflects the
predictability of the day, including the boys constant use of the buzz-saw. Multiple lines do
not conform to the iambic pentameter. Line 3 is one of them, it does not conform as it
reflects the breeze of the wind.

Both Harrison and Frost vividly depict the idea of ‘coping with change’ during difficult times,
however the way in which they approach this idea is very different. In The Bright Lights of
Sarajevo Harrison sets a persevering mood throughout his poem, as he shows how people
manage to carry on even at the toughest of times from his first-hand experience in Sarajevo.

Charlie Howard
However, in “Out, Out”, frost sets out a sympathetic tone in his poem, through his
description towards the fragility of life and how easily it can be taken away.

Commentary

All the different poems showed different aspects of life, such as loss, war, oppression. I
chose “Out, out”, and The Bright Lights of Sarajevo as they both reflect the ways in which
people cope with change in society. Harrison writes about his personal experiences from
when he worked as a news journalist working in Sarajevo and writes this poem from a non-
prejudice perspective, addressing all ethnicities present during the siege. The poem
educated me around the events of the Siege of Sarajevo and how until something goes
wrong, there’s always racism apparent somewhere; I was more engaged with this poem for
that reason, as I learnt something new which was interesting.

“Out, out” questions the fragility of life. It portrays how life can be ended so abruptly, in the
form of a boy getting his armed sawn off, inevitably leading to his death. This frightened me,
I found the poem very harrowing through frost’s constant ominous tone, “day was all but
done.” This demonstrates how someone doing such an inconsiderable thing, such as work,
can lead to death, further questioning the brevity of life. I was thoroughly engaged with this
poem as it engrossed me with its intensive use of imagery, which I enjoyed as I could almost
picture the scene happening in my head.

Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” also interested me as it was standing against the stereotype
that are world should be patriarchal and white-dominated, she shows this throughout her
poem with her constant sarcasm and strength. However, I didn’t choose this poem as it not
interest me on a literal basis, in my opinion the poem does not consist of as many literary
devices as my chosen poems. So, subsequently, I did not choose this poem.

I chose these poems as they interest me, and both portray positive messages.

Charlie Howard
Charlie Howard