34 pages • 1 hour read
Robert FrostA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
With its memorable opening depicting a “long two-pointed ladder sticking through a tree” (Line 1), Frost’s poem transports readers to an idyllic space. The ladder points “[t]oward heaven still” (Line 2), communicating to the reader that the speaker did not bother to remove the ladder from the tree before leaving the orchard. While the apples in the poem can be interpreted as symbols for sin, wisdom, or knowledge, they can further represent opportunities available, taken, and not taken. The apples may also symbolize choices available, made, and not made and the ever-unfolding consequences that decision-making harbors.
Every apple picked is an opportunity taken, and every apple not picked is an opportunity not taken. The ladder left unclimbed at the day’s end is like an available opportunity not revisited. Readers can interpret the remaining apples as opportunities available but not yet taken. Lines 25-26—”The rumbling sound / Of load on load of apples coming in”—represent the many daily opportunities and choices presenting themselves and requiring a decision to take them or let them pass. Lines 27-28 show the speaker’s exhaustion with having to continually make decisions and the wear and tear decision-making causes in life: “For I have had too much / Of apple picking: I am overtired.
By Robert Frost
Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost
A Time To Talk
Robert Frost
Birches
Robert Frost
Dust of Snow
Robert Frost
Fire and Ice
Robert Frost
Mending Wall
Robert Frost
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
October
Robert Frost
Once by the Pacific
Robert Frost
Out, Out—
Robert Frost
Putting in the Seed
Robert Frost
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Robert Frost
The Death of the Hired Man
Robert Frost
The Gift Outright
Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
West-Running Brook
Robert Frost