Symbol Analysis
A major piece of this poem is sensory—that is, what did this experience look like? What did it sound like? We transition from a pastoral (but still industrial) country scene to a grim bedside death-watch. In some cases, a lack of sound can be almost as disturbing as sound itself. Notice also (this is super-important) that Frost does not describe what the hand meeting the saw sounded like. You'd think he would, given all the sound imagery in the rest of the poem, but he gives us enough information (what the boy sounds like, what the saw sounds like) to construct the grisly image in our heads.
- Line 1: One of the biggest sensory images in the poem—the sound of the saw: "snarled and rattled." Most of you readers have probably heard a saw before, but notice how Frost combines an animal image (snarl) with a machine-like one (rattle). This is crucial to Frost's message.
- Line 3: The sawdust was "sweet-scented when the breeze drew across it." Not only do we have smell here, but we also have touch (how the wind feels when it blows by).
- Line 5: Again, we get the standard but beautiful New England sunset. Notice how by line 5 into the poem, we've already hit almost all of the senses.
- Line 7: This snarling and rattling is everywhere! Why? Frost hammers home the repetitiveness of a machine like the saw—it doesn't think or feel, it just repeats. This is important also because the saw as a character is merciless (not in the sense of cruelty, but in the sense that even an animated saw lacks mercy or feeling).
- Line 19: The boy's first cry after slicing his hand is "a rueful laugh," or a regretful laugh. Essentially, this scene is so tragic because the boy almost laughs at what could have been something huge, and then realizes that it is in fact something huge.
- Line 32: Frost is never more tragic, and never more simple, than in his description of the boy's death: "Little-less-nothing!" Crucial here is the lack of sounds, rather than a burst of them. Silence connotes death, and so the winding down of sensory imagery here alerts us to death's presence.