The tone in “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” changes according to the reader who interprets the poem. In the first possible interpretation, the main conflict is between hard toil and laziness. While Icarus flies up in the air, enjoying himself and the wings that help him enjoy his freedom in the air, peasants and farmers work hard on land tilting the soil. When this conflict is considered, Williams’ tone is sarcastic because no body realizes the falling Icarus. As those on the land are much busy with dealing with the soil, they are concerned with their own work only. To support this tone, the poet uses such words as “concerned,” “sweating”, “unsignificantly” and “unnoticed”. When these words are combined, the great tragedy of Icarus becomes insignificant. Therefore, it is sarcastic.
A second interpretation may be given as the conflict between ignorance and knowledge. The busy peasants deal with agriculture, which means that they are ignorant about technology. Icarus represents technology and his flight signifies the beginning of aerospace research and aeronautics. He is like a pioneer astronaut who becomes a martyr of technological inquiry. When we read the poem from this perspective, the tone of the poet becomes bitter because he is sorry for Icarus and angry the ignorant farmers. In this interpretation, the words given about becomes quite opposite of the meaning in the first interpretation.
Besides these words, Williams does not use any punctuation, which supports the continuity of the tone. The reader has to read the entire poem non-stop and without taking and breath. Eventually, by the end of the poem the breath will be exhaled completely, which signifies death or “drowning.” Form wise, Williams uses seven stanzas of three short lines each, which speeds up the reading pace.
In “Out, Out-,” Robert Frost tells a terrifying story of a boy who chops his hand while cutting wood for the stove. As his concentration shifts from his work to his sister’s call for “supper,” he loses his hand because the saw cuts it off. First, the boy laughs bitterly, unable to understand what has happened to him. Second, he begs that the doctor not cut off his hand. Finally, the doctor operates him but he passes away during the operation. His heart beatings become “little-less-nothing”. As he dies, life goes on as it used to be. Frost’s poem, unlike Williams’, is written in an easy tone in the beginning but the tone becomes more and more serious and it becomes terrifying at the end of the poem. Frost writes his poem in a form without any break. It is a poem of thirty-four longer lines. However, he uses punctuation such as the hyphen to make the reader stop, think, and empathize. For instance, the reader stops when the boy’s hand leaps, when the boy sees all and understands when he understands that he is a boy doing a man’s work, and when he begs for his hand, not to be cut off. These are crucial instances when the boy gets mature too fast to die finally.
