the doctor are known only as sister and doctor. The remaining characters arent even described but only referred to as them (line 14) and they (lines 31 and 33). Notice too the use of personification consonance and alliteration in line 14 (As if to prove saws knew what supper meant). This figurative language suggests something almost snakelike suddenly striking out to kill the boy. The serpentlike image coupled with the the suggestion in line 17 that the boy must have given the hand alludes to the scene in the Garden of Eden in which Adam accepts the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and is afterwards expelled from Paradise and condemned to die.