Robert frost after apple picking. Analysis of After Apple 2019-01-08
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Summary and Analysis of Robert Frost's 'After Apple
It is one matter to recover values lost because of fatigue. And I keep hearing from the cellar bin The rumbling sound Of load on load of apples coming in. But I was well Upon my way to sleep before it fell, 15 And I could tell What form my dreaming was about to take. Significantly, Frost defines the curse still further: man will not cease to labor even in rest. It is characteristic of Frost that the 'sentencing' and the sense are surely controlled, that daylight accuracy and daylight humor are present in statement and tone. Soon, he is on his way to sleep. His poems use metaphors to give main concepts spatial orientation; he gives meaning to them by showing a journey of going toward Heaven, for Frost is used to represent his thoughts of passing on and this is an example of him reflecting upon his life, relating to his original belief of writing metaphors.
Gone is the speaker's sense of relative values. Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it's like his Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep. Magnified apples appear and reappear, Stem end and blossom end, And every fleck of russet showing clear. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. Fantasy means a lot to me, because it's the main subject I like to illustrate. The poem is not merely about apple-picking, but is about life and death as imaged in a set of contrasts: summer-winter; labor-rest; ordinary view and the view seen through the pane of ice.
The mention of the ladder standing upright, in the direction of Heaven, hints at the biblical story of Jacob's ladder, where Jacob dreams of a ladder that reached Heaven. Sometimes, one may even have achieved lifelong goals and targets have been met but life does not stay longer to support one to relish the fruits of one's labours. Presumably men do not go into physical hibernation for months. There is an abundance of apples, and there are tens of thousands of them for him to touch, admire and to pick or lift carefully so as not to let any of them fall down on the ground. He thinks of how he will dream about apples. In moving between dream and objectivity, the ladder and the human laborer sway precariously on the verge of disintegration.
On a more positive note, another interpretation of this poem suggests that the narrator is a dying man, who is satisfied with all that he has achieved in his life, and though he wishes he could have done more, he is happy with whatever he has done. Stare at an object long enough and its impression is retained after the eyes are closed. Presumably woodchucks do not dream and do not desire great harvests. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples; I am drowsing off. Lines 32-36 could be subtle allusions to fallen men men that have sinned being worthless, as the fallen apples are worthless. I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. His ladder is pointed toward heaven only, and he has had to descend from it.
Having spent most of his adult years in rural New England, we can see various aspects of rural life beautifully painted in his poems. His sleep may be troubled by the thought or awareness of the reality which has been ignored in the dream. As the poem progresses however, feelings of suspension and resignation start to dominate. For all … As of no worth. Though the tone of the poem is not particularly ominous, there are several metaphors that would lead a careful reader to believe that Frost has crafted a poem about the eternal sleep — death.
But it also becomes the dominant metaphor of life and death in the new scripture of Darwin. Each phase of reminiscence or reflection forms a unit of syntax, all except two without a final stop within the unit; and each unit becomes in effect a stanza marked off by one or two rhyming 'seals. While the reader is kept awake and on his or her toes by these syntactic changes, the speaker drifts into a dreamlike state, exemplified by the fact that there are no stanzas in the poem. Whatever the interpretation, there is a tension between feelings of regret and satisfaction that is created and sustained throughout… A Swinger of Birches Hardened by the daily toils and responsibilities, the soft innocence of youth is easily forgotten with age. Published in 1914 in Frost's book North of Boston, After Apple Picking quickly established itself as one of the most unusual of offerings from the poet, despite the seeming ordinariness of the setting - a farm orchard. For all That struck the earth, No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, Went surely to the cider-apple heap As of no worth. Without straining the issue, the word heaven elicits subconscious responses involving death and immortality.
Or, in the final act of harvest, the speaker will sleep the immortal sleep, reaping what he has sown, a simple creative life underpinned by symbol and metaphor, a profound approach to the art of getting lost. My instep arch not only keeps the ache, It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. His is always enriched with the depiction of agrarian and natural scenes. The speaker's sleep won't be hibernation, or will it? Dualism is replaced by an almost religious sense of unity here; and the tone of irony, quizzical reserve, completely disappears in favour of wonder and incantation. Each author uses nature as an element in his poems.
The Use of Metaphors in Frost's, “After Apple Picking”,...
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. But its elevated diction quite distinct from anything else in the book as well as its images, mood and theme, all suggest a greater affinity with Keats' :Ode to a Nightingale. Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it's like his Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or just some human sleep. As usual, in this poem Frost hovers between the daylight world of commonsense reality and the dream world of possibility, the voices of sense and of song, the visions of the pragmatist and the prophet, the compulsions of the road and the seductions of the woods. . These authors use different symbols in their work; however, to me these poems all have one symbol in common, a dream.
