Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Miscellaneous Maturing Teen Then and Now Maturing Teen Then and Now Back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, children were put to work at a very young age. They cleaned, cooked, cared for the land their family owned, and also took care of other siblings in the household. These responsibilities pushed the children into maturing and growing up faster than expected. Robert Frost presents this theme in his poem “Out, Out—.” In this poem he shows how young children are taking on the responsibilities of adults, which causes the teens to age earlier in life. By comparing the time back then and the time now, people will find that not only are the children growing and aging at a young age, but also that they are in two different ways. When Frost wrote this poem, it was around the time that not very many children went to school because they had to stay home and help their parents tend to the land so they could survive. In “Out, Out—“, Frost presents a young boy who lives with his family in Vermont, and is expected to work their land just like a grown man would. At the beginning of the poem, the young boy is cutting wood with a saw. Frost says, “The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard and made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,…” In this statement Frost explains how the young boy cuts the wood, which is more like a job than a helpful chore. This wasn’t unusual for the teens back than because as soon as they are old enough to work, they start working to help provide for their family. In order for these families to survive properly in their time, they had to have many children to enable them to have plenty of workers to work the land. If they didn’t have children, or very little of them, their land wouldn’t produce anything and therefore the family would not survive. Therefore, children were being produced for the sole purpose that as soon as they were of age, they would be put to work so that their own family and their future family would survive. The many responsibilities that the children were responsible for were usually tasks such as cutting wood, cooking, cleaning, and tending to any animals that the family may own. The boy in this poem has taken on so many responsibilities as a young child, that he is forced to mature into an older man in order to provide and keep his family alive. “Call it a day, I wish they might have said to please a boy by giving him the half hour that a boy counts so much when saved from work,” explains Frost. He shows here that this boy worked all day to provide for his family, and in order to get a little extra time to himself he worked extra hard. Not only did the young boys have jobs in the family but the young girls did also. Frost supports this idea by saying, “ His sister stood beside them in her apron to tell them ‘Supper.’” This shows that the young girl has cooked for the family and is taking responsibility of making sure everyone gets nourished. Not only does this represent the idea that children are expected to grow at a young age, but it also creates a contrasting view with today’s teens. Although Frost’s poem presents the idea of children working at a young age and then being expected to mature earlier in life, it is also able to compare to present day teenagers and how they are growing up at a very young age. Even though Frost’s poem “Out, Out—“ shows how children were working at young age, today’s children are growing up in a much different sense. Now they are having babies in their early teens, using drugs, and dropping out of school. After having a baby, using drugs, or dropping out of school, these teens face the real world and they are expected to grow up and mature for the ability to take on the responsibilities as an adult. These responsibilities are also the fault of the teenager but back when Frost wrote the poem, children were not responsible for their maturing at young age. It was their destiny from they day they were born because their parents conceived them in order to keep their family alive. But in present day, these teens are responsible for their own actions. They don’t have safe sex, which results in pregnancy and years of child support by one of the parents. Not only is that their fault, but it is also their responsibility to make sure that the child lives a happy and healthy life. Besides from having children in their early teens, some teenagers are already using or addicted to drugs. Our society makes drugs far more accessible to teenagers, which in turn is causing the rate of drug addiction and usage among children to rise in America. This also requires teens to age faster than usual because in order to keep on using they have to know how to deal with the drug dealers and also in order to get help to stop using, they have to mature and know how to admit they have a problem. All of these problems and responsibilities brought on our youth in society today are not only their fault, but also the fault of our society because they make it easy to obtain and commit all these actions. Therefore, if our society made changes to better the youth of today, the children would be able to live happy and normal lives instead of growing up and acting like an adult way before their time. Children are growing at a steady rate every day. They seem to take on their own paths in life and create responsibilities for themselves in order for them to mature at the rate they want to. Frost presented the idea that these children were expected and forced into having duties at a young age, which in turn resulted in the maturing at a young age. Even though these teenagers of today and yesterday are growing and maturing at a rapid rate, it is the responsibility of the older society to protect and care for the youth to help them on their path in life even if people do not agree with those paths that they have chosen. Bibliography: Frost, Robert. "Out, Out-." Reading and Writing From Literature. Ed. Schweibert John E. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York. pg. 814 Word Count: 1071
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