the next tragedy, the death of the boy. Frost utilizes dialogue to convey the boy’s pleading voice as he begs his sister to not let the doctor “cut [his] hand off”. The syntax Frost chose was specifically selected to reflect the boy’s life as it begins to diminish. Compared with the first few lines of the poem, the concluding ones consist of short, choppy sentences as death closes in on the boy. The doctor arrives and gives the boy “ether”, an anesthetic, after which Frost describes the boy’s breathing as shallow and weakening while he “lay and puffed his lips out with his breath”. Frost paints such real images with his words that the reader can almost see as “the watcher at (the boy’s) pulse…[listens] to his heart” as the beating fades from “little” to “less” to “nothing”, which “[ends]” the boy’s life. The theme does not become clear to the reader until the last sentence, depicting how the family and friends “[are] not the one dead”, so they “turn to their affairs”, and proceed on with their lives. Frost conveys the necessity of how people must go on, even after a tragedy such as the death of a loved one, because life continues, and so must they. Even though going on with life is a necessity, the speed in which the family and friends proceed to do so causes the reader to wonder what their motives are--necessity or selfishness.Frost personifies the buzz saw so that it seems to come alive with a will of its own. The phrase “snarled and rattled” repeats three times throughout the poem to depict an image of the buzz saw whirring back and forth. At times “it [runs] light, or [has] to bear a load]”, which conveys the saw as a living being that must carry something. Frost gives the buzz saw an ominous air, a will of its own, when it “[leaps] out at the boy&#...
