Speaker
The speaker of this poem is evidently a small child, with no experience of death. This is apparent not only in the title, but in the character's mental and physical experience of the world. She is small enough that an adult has to lift her up to reach her cousin's coffin, and her experience of this solemn moment is impressionistic, full of childlike associations that emerge in Bishop's figurative language. The cousin's coffin is compared to a cake, while a nearby marbled table resembles a frozen lake. She understands the uncanny look of a dead body through childlike associations, thinking about Jack Frost and dolls as she examines it. She is, for the first time, attempting to grapple with questions of death and what comes after, cobbling together her available points of reference—the royal family, for instance, and the snow outside— to understand an impossibly uncertain reality.
Arthur
Arthur is an unusual character, because he only appears in the poem after his death. Moreover, very little is revealed about his life. While the speaker briefly mentions that he is the son of her uncle, also named Arthur, he appears primarily not as a remembered living person but as a lovingly described body. The speaker is fascinated and puzzled by his appearance, noting that he has his eyes clenched shut and that his hair is the only colorful part of him. By comparing her cousin to a doll, imagining that Jack Frost has painted only his hair, and picturing him as a tiny member of the royal court, the speaker brings her cousin into her own childlike imagination. Though he has died very young, she in a sense invites him back into his prematurely ended childhood.
