Did I do a good enough job? Did I live a purposeful life? These are question one might ask themselves when they feel the end of their life might be near. In “After Apple Picking”, Robert Frost uses the symbols of a ladder, apples, and sleep to transform the simple job of apple picking into a poem about the end of a man’s life drawing to a close and its worth.
From the beginning of the poem, Frost eludes to a more significant meaning when he says the ladder is poking up “through a tree / Toward heaven…” (1-2). The apple picker’s ladder is a symbol for Jacob’s ladder as described in the Bible. Jacob’s ladder was a ladder that sat upon the earth and stretched all the way to Heaven and allowed God’s Angels to travel back and forth. Since God was at the top of Jacob’s ladder, the ladder in the orchard symbolizes the apple picker’s path that will take him to God (Genesis 28:10-19) Although the speaker probably used this ladder daily to climb into the trees to pick apples, Frost makes the ladder a symbol for the speaker’s path to Heaven. In lines 21-23 Frost again references the ladder and the ache it leaves in the apple picker’s instep (21). Anyone who has stood on a ladder for any length of time knows the pain standing on its rungs can bring to the feet. Repeatedly climbing that ladder and the ache it causes the apple picker’s feet is another way Frost uses the orchard ladder as a symbol for a path to Heaven.
Frost mentions sleep six different times during the poem “After Apple-Picking”, but he is not always speaking strictly of sleep. Winter has long been a season symbolically associated with the end of a person’s life. With the line “Essence of winter sleep is on the night” Frost uses the combination of winter and sleep t...
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...created a poem that, at a glance, is simply about a man being tired of picking apple after apple during his life. However, further examination shows that “After Apple-Picking is so much more than that. By analyzing symbols in the poem like the ladder, sleep, and the apples, the reader can see that it’s a poem about a man having worked hard during his life to achieve his goals, looking back at his accomplishments, and wondering if it was all enough to bring him peace and happiness once he falls into his eternal sleep of death.
Works Cited
Frost, Robert. "After Apple-Picking." Perrine's Literature: Structure Sound & Sense. 11th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2010. 720-21. Print.
Genesis. BibleGateway.com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 100 Versions and 50 Languages. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
"The Woodchuck." The Woodchuck. Pennsylvania State University. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
The society of today’s world revolves around satisfaction, and as humans there is never a true feeling of satisfaction. In our lives it is no longer about satisfying ourselves but also satisfying the people we love the most. Throughout the poems; Blackberries by Yusef Komunyakaa, Singapore by Mary Oliver, and What Work Is by Philip Levine, lays a constant crave of satisfaction. The real issue is knowing that our soul-hunger for satisfaction is never truly met, at least from other people’s eyes. In each poem there comes a circumstance of when the narrator faces a time when questioning their whole idea of self-worth and satisfaction, caused by outside influences. These outside influences usually pity the narrator for having the jobs that they
Coogan, Michael David., Marc Zvi. Brettler, Carol A. Newsom, and Pheme Perkins. "Genesis." The New Oxford Annotated Bible: With the Apocrypha. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.
Frost uses a religious allusion to further enforce the objective of the poem. Whether Frost's argument is proven in a religious or scientific forum, it is nonetheless true. In directly citing these natural occurrences from inanimate, organic things such as plants, he also indirectly addresses the phenomena of aging in humans, in both physical and spiritual respects. Literally, this is a poem describing the seasons. Frosts interpretation of the seasons is original in the fact that it is not only autumn that causes him grief, but summer.
Frost’s application of diction in “Acquainted With the Night” expresses the meaning that hard times provides isolation through key words that provide the audience with proof that the speaker is communicating a detached mood. In line 1, “acquainted,” is a vital use of diction to show the meaning. The word acquainted means to know very well. When the speaker is saying he is “acquainted with the night” in line 1, he is indicating that he is familiar with the lonely night. By being “acquainted” with darkness, or the night, in his life, the speaker is illustrating how being in an isolated state of life is not new to him. The meaning of detached feelings because of hardships is revealed
"Bible Gateway." BibleGateway.com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 100 Versions and 50 Languages. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
On the other side, Coleridge is raised in rural London and expresses his idea that, as a child, he felt connected to nature when looking above the sky and seeing the stars. Unlike Wordsworth, who felt freedom of mind, Coleridge felt locked up in the city. Since he did not have any experience with nature, he did not get the opportunity to appreciate nature until he became an adult. In Coleridge’s poem “Frost at Midnight,” readers see how the pain of alienation from nature has toughened Coleridge’s hope that his children will enjoy a peaceful nature.
...fall of snow and the unremitting “sweep” of “easy wind” appear tragically indifferent to life, in turn stressing the value of Poirier’s assessment of the poem. Frost uses metaphor in a way that gives meaning to simple actions, perhaps exploring his own insecurities before nature by setting the poem amongst a tempest of “dark” sentiments. Like a metaphor for the workings of the human mind, the pull between the “promises” the traveller should keep and the lure of death remains palpably relevant to modern life. The multitudes of readings opened up through the ambiguity of metaphor allows for a setting of pronounced liminality; between life and death, “night and day, storm and heath, nature and culture, individual and group, freedom and responsibility,” Frost challenges his readers to delve deep into the subtlety of tone and come to a very personal conclusion.
“I sometimes speak from the last thing that happened to me. I got asked today if I think up poems. Do I think them up? How do I get the right one? Well, it is the hardest thing in the world to tell. But I don’t think up poems. I pick up a lot of things I thought of to make a poem; that is a lot of scattered thoughts through the days that are handy for the poem-that’s about all. That’s where the thinking comes in.”
This paper is about “After Apple Picking,” by Robert Frost, from the perspectives of Carl Phillips and Priscilla Paton. I would like to focus more on Carl Phillips discussion of “After Apple Picking” as his article has more focus on an actual argument on what “After Apple Picking” is about compared to Paton’s article which is more about how Frost went about writing his poems though his usage of metaphors and vague colloquialisms . Neither article was solely about “After Apple Picking,” but both had a few good observations and comments about the poem. Phillips main observation, and argument, was that “After Apple Picking” was about restlessness and ambition. “It’s a poem of restlessness, the restlessness of an ambition that spurs us towards greater achievement.” (Phillips 134).
The setting takes place in the daylight of the woods. I felt that Frost set the poem in the woods because it helps reader imagine trees, leaves, and bushes. Therefore readers know that the speaker is alone without any road signs or knowledge of any direction on which road to take. The “yellow wood”(1) means that its somewhere in the fall when the leaves are changing colors. The “yellow” brings out a beautiful image of the autumn to readers. The “yellow wood” means there is a continuous decision one makes in li...
The first stanza opens up with saying how the speaker was young and did not have a care in the world. The first line talks about him relaxing under an apple bough, which is an apple tree. He also goes on to explain in line two that he is as “happy as the grass was green” (2), which
Robert Frost, known for being a Modernist American poet was said to have hidden the pain of his private life through his writing career. He shared many ideas and was barely given credit for any of it during his lifetime. However, the nation mourned when “the most beloved poet of the century” passed away. (Greiner 94-95). After his death, the nation was then able to study and understand Frost’s life and the reasoning behind his poetry. Frost was set on making a difference in poetry as he once expressed, “I expect to do something to the present state of literature in America” (Greiner 95). The poem, “Putting in the Seed” written by Frost himself, expresses one of his common themes in his poems, nature. Being recognized as an American poet till after death, Frost has impacted poetry in a way that may not exist if it was not for him. Throughout his life he overcame many hardships through writing, which he used as therapy. This astounding author left the impression of creativity at its finest.
Frost, Robert, and Robert Faggen. The Notebooks of Robert Frost. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 2006. Print.
Oglivie, John T. “From Woods to Stars: A Pattern of Imagery in Robert Frost’s Poetry.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jean Stine. Vol. 26. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. Print.
...ach other “Frosts poetry has a very vast range, from extremely long detailed poems, like ‘after apple picking” and “a servant to servants” or relatively short like, “A soldier” or “A question” (which is only four lines). Each of his poems encompasses something different but all have a strong sense of sameness when it comes to the message he wants to communicate to us. A brook in the city represents to a great extent, Frosts overall style and view on poetry. The poem has a rhyme scheme, he uses a vast amount of figures of speech and his language is colloquial, this goes for most, if not all of Frosts poetry. The poem also encompasses his thoughts and views on mankind and their response to the universe. Frost wants us as the reader to comprehend his message and find some sort of wisdom in it. If we do, then Frost has accomplished what he set out to do with his poetry.