How we cite our quotes: (Line)
Quote #1
As it ran light, or had to bear a load. (8)
Although the subject of this sentence is still the saw, who's doing the sawing? The boy. So really, the boy is running light or bearing a load. Because he's an adolescent, he's either doing a man's work or hoping he'll be reprieved. (He will, but not in the way he'd, or we'd, like.)
Quote #2
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work. (10-12)
Here we are again at the pass between boyhood and manhood. Who is "they" here? Do you think it's a familial force, or a force of the men only in the family? When you're a kid, work is just the worst.
Quote #3
At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. (14-18)
Here's another example of this mixing of personalities between the boy and the saw. Is he only as good as the man-work he does? Would a man have refused the meeting? In a game of chicken, somebody always blinks first (just look at the Cuban Missile Crisis). But here, the game was between a boy and a machine.
Quote #4
Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart—
He saw all was spoiled. (22-25)
Notice how eerie the mixing is between the childish phrase "big boy" and the adult "spoiled." It exactly describes what's happening. Frost also mixes clichés to relate to the reader—he deploys them in emotional moments that resonate, so that the reader empathizes with the boy, even though the family doesn't seem to.