After Apple-Picking

Much has been written about the futility of life and humankind’s involvement in the natural world. “After Apple-Picking” depicts an orchard: a place where life, death, and seasons merge. During Frost’s time, orchards were a common scene in rural New England. In Lines 3-5, this futility is initially subtle: “And there’s a barrel that I didn’t feel […] Beside it, and there may be two or three / Apples I didn’t pick upon some bought.” Frost uses nature in this poem to represent life at its harshest, and he relies on taste, sight, and touch to grasp not only the futility of humankind, but also the awareness of individual futility.

The line “[e]ssence of winter sleep is on the night” (Line 7) acts as a shifting point into the poem’s darker, colder elements. The speaker depicts looking through a frosted window, and their vision is skewed by the frost, representing a lack of clarity. From this line forward, Lines 15-17 center on sleeping and the speaker’s inability to fall asleep: “Upon my way to sleep before it fell, / And I could tell / What form my dreaming was about to take.” The poem develops and maintains a tone reminiscent of Poe’s “The Raven” as the figurative lines between wakefulness and sleep blur. This ebb and flow of wakefulness and drowsiness bob-and-wheel in Line 18 “[m]agnified apples appear and disappear” and Line 19 “[s]tem end and blossom end.”

Apples, of course, hold significant importance throughout the poem. In the Christian tradition, the Old Testament associates apples with sin and the fall of humankind; the New Testament incorporates the apple as a symbol of redemption. In the Greek tradition, golden apples appear in the Garden of the Hesperides. The Hesperides often picked these apples for themselves, though their only task was to maintain the garden. As punishment, Hera placed a 100-headed dragon in the garden to guard the apples.

The ancient Greeks also associated apples with the Trojan War since it began after Paris of Troy awarded an apple to Aphrodite when she tempted him. In Norse mythology, the goddess of eternal youth keeps a box made of ash wood full of apples that the gods have eaten to make them young again. Lines 31-33, because of words like “fall” and phrases like “[f]or all” and “struck the earth” are apocalyptic and damning. Lines 34-35, with images of apples “not bruised or spiked with stubble” and “[w]ent surely to the cider-apple heap,” allude to the Christian tradition of sin, forgiveness, and according to the Book of Revelations, how only a few believers will be saved during a time known as The Rapture.

Physical labor serves as a tool for self-discovery in many of Frost’s works. It also holds many diverse meanings in everyday living. Since the poetic experience is irrevocably the individual’s, Frost’s authentic portrayals of labor enlighten readers as to how work can be simultaneously liberating and rewarding while personally and culturally stifling. The action of apple-picking can be interpreted as living a long life. Images depicting the physical demand of apple-picking reinforce this idea: “My instep arch not only keeps the ache, / It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round” (Lines 21-22). The speaker’s resolution implies that the speaker is tired of living and ready for death: “Of apple-picking: I am overtired” (Line 28).

Scholars frequently point to recurring themes of sleep and dreams in Frost’s poem as representative of the cycles of life and death. The word “sleep” repeats six times throughout the poem: once in Line 7, once in Line 15, twice in Line 38, once in Line 41, and once in Line 42. The poem also ends with the word “sleep.” The phrase “long sleep” (Line 41) is often considered a euphemism for death; thus, Frost’s choice of the phrase has offered poetry scholars much discussion. The speaker parallels humankind with nature, positing humankind’s experiences with those of the woodchuck: “The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his / Long sleep” (Lines 40-41). The speaker feels such exhaustion that they liken it to the woodchuck’s hibernation. There is no explicit reason to believe the speaker is necessarily talking about dying here, but when coupled with other contextual clues throughout the poem, the argument can be made.

According to some scholars, Frost believed experience had to be transformed into metaphor in order for it to become poetry. Frost asserted that metaphor was at the heart of all language—not just poetry. This idea harkens to the American transcendentalists, who believed that matter is a metaphor for spirit. While Frost relied on metaphor in many of his poems, most notably related to “After Apple-Picking” are the poems “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Fences,” and “Acquainted with the Night.” Other academics do not consider Frost a transcendentalist, but they regularly label his poetry as “nature poetry.” Other academic circles consider Frost a realist poet because while poems like “After Apple-Picking” focus on nature, they work to expose the brutal realities of historical and human shifts.