I am creating this post so that students can bounce ideas off of each other regarding the poems chosen for the poetry essay. This post is dedicated to the Robert Frost poem After Apple Picking. The text of the poem can be found below. Even if you are not using this poem for an essay, feel free to comment and share your ideas about it.
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
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 I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
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.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
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.
22 comments:
When i first read this poem i had no idea what it is about. But, then i kept re-reading it and now i feel like i know what it means. I think there is this man who is an apple picker. He has been doing this his whole life, and now he is an old man. One day, he is just so tired he doesn't feel like apple picking any more, he just feels like sleeping. But, i feel like the old man is scared to go in and sleep because he's not sure if it's going to be either a normal sleep where you will eventually wake up or the kind of sleep where you will never wake up.
I read it several times and discovered that the man had wanted a great harvest of apples at the beginning of the season, but when it was over, he had done so much he couldn't stop thinking about apples. It kept him from getting proper sleep, and he could still feel the ache in his foot from the ladder rung that he stood on picking the apples. It actually took me some time before I realized what it meant, been when I figured it out, I felt sort of stupid.
i also read it several times before i actually sort of understood it. i think that the speaker obviosuly really liked appels and always thought about it even when he was sleeping. he seems sort of obbssevie over apples, and how he cant get the smell out of his mind.
Well the speaker of this poem obviously has a sort of obsession with apples. He hears them tumbling by the thousand, feels the pressure of the ladder still on his foot, and sees "magnified apples appear and disappear." He sees them and hears them everywhere, and he is finally realizing that and it seems to be that he sort of wants to stop it. he realizes that he is overtired and that the apples are keeping him up. I think that the apples symbolize a thing or person that he cannot stop thinking about. This person or thing is stuck in his head and he is realizing that it is becoming unhealthy that he cannot stop thinking of them. At the beginning, he thought that his relationship with this person would grow into some great thing, but in the end he realizes that he didnt get what he wanted in the beginning. That is what I got from the poem.
At first I didnt understand the poem but now I realize that the poet must just love apples. I think that is the one and only point of this story.
I think the poem is about the speaker liking apple piking so much that he picked the all day until he got tired from fatigue. The speakers mind was still thinking about apples when he went to sleep and the speaker had a dream about picking apples and wondered if he would ever wake up from the wonderful dream where he picked apples that were worthless because they were imaginary.
Okay, okay! I got the real thing now! Alright, so the speaker, whom I think to be an elderly man, is looking back on his life, and the opportunities he did and didn't take advantage of. He is dreaming about them, how he felt when they were presented to him, and how they impacted his life. He regrets that he didn't take advantage of as many opportunities as possible, but he is tired of making those difficult decisions. The stress of trying to figure out which is in his best interest, etc. As he sleeps/dreams, he wonders if his sleep is a simple human rest, or if this will be his last sleep, that it will stretch on forever, from which he will never wake. The apples were the opportunities, the barrels the ones he didn't take advantage of, the ladder his course through life, the human sleep the literal, and the woodchuck's long sleep death. I really love this poem after finding some sort of metaphorical (allegorical?) meaning.
When I first read the poem I had no clue what it was saying. Then I read it a few more times and I understood it more. Well there definatly is A LOT of symbolism in the poem. The way I interpreted it was that the apples represented the tasks that he never got to finish. He is dying and is looking back on his life with regret. The sleep also symbolizes death, obviously. Thats what I got from this poem.
Yes! I agree with most of what you guys are saying! I just wanted to add something though... While i was trying to figure out a unique ending to my literary analysis essay i started to wonder why this speaker is so obsessed with missing those opportunities because even though he doesn't get to them they are "made in cider" and used to help other people. But then i thought.. that could be just it! - he doesn't get to them- < this could really mean that he is jealous he never go to do them himself. Maybe he wanted to show the whole world, SEE WHAT I DID! and for them to be amazed. He could have been being a bit selfish about every opportunity. He was mad he couldn't live up to this image he had created himself to be. -- if somebody could comment on this idea it would be great.. I'd like to hear some ideas on it..
I think that this poem is about a apple picker who has an obsession with apples and even when he tries to got to bed and do other activites he keeps coming back to the thougt of apples and for this poem i thougt the theme was most people over work themeslves and end up with stress. I say this because the poet keeps working with apples and now all he can think about is apples and even if he tries doing something else he is still reminded of them and it stresses him out until the end of the poem where he starts to have this I don't care anymore type of attitude.
I think that the theme of this poem is: not everyone is promised, or will get, all the experiences in life. I think that the apples are the experiences, and that he didn't reach some, and didn't fill some barrels. When the apples seemed to appear and disappear, I thought that maybe that was him getting older, and losing some of his memories, unable to remember because he was so tired. The apple cider I think is him being remembered, apples technically die when they are made into cider, however, cider is (this was on my essay) "a sweet memory of what was."
i feel like the author has nothing else but apples so its alll he really knows so it became sort of an obsession. He cant get them out of his mind so he must feel like hes going crazy. He just doesnt want to die (the sleep) without experienceing everythign he can.
i had alot of difficulty understanding this poem. I have absolutely no idea what Frost's message is. If anyone has any ideas i would love to know
I thought the apples represented life, and now winter (death) has came he is crazy he didnt experince life (apples) and he is going crazy? wouldnt you go crazy as well if you are now realizeing oh darn didnt pick enogh apples or oh darn didnt really experience life, and no i am dieing its a big mistake not experienceing life because your afraid, or unwilling to because you are going to die, might as well have a good life, what the speaker is dealing with now, i found this a sad poem, and a taching poem to always really enjoy life, because sooner than you know it you WILL BE DEAD, and thats scary so the theme is whater you really inturpret what the apples are then you can go from there.....
umasslax19... people have been posting there ideas about the message so maybe look back at a few of the comments and maybe that will give you some thoughts.
i like annies point of view on the poem. it makes sense but it is a very creative way to think about the poem. but i thimk that the barrell represents life and by not filling it he means that he didnt live his life to the fullest but now winter (or death as anne said) is coming and he wont have enough time to fill up the barrel.
Now that I read the poem with all of these new understandings of the poem, I actually get it! After reading the poem several times, I figured it out. I used Kathleen's interpretation to help me figure out the poem. It took me a few tries, but I got it.
Well I read what Ali said, and I kinda get what she's saying but I think the apples symbolize routine rather than a person that keeps him up. It's saying that routine is good, but it's nothing special. It takes away the fun of life, (him not sleeping, it's making him stress over it). It holds you back.
I definitley agree with Dana. But in the beginning of this poem i had no idea what it was about and what the meaning was, but as i got farther into the poem i started to understand. It took several times or me to read the poem over and over again to figure it out.
I agree with dana. but in the begining of this poem i did not know what it would be about or what the meaning would be. As i got farther into the poem i started to understand it.
I agree with dana but I think apple picking is the way he gets money. I think it is like homework. He can't stop picking because he won't get money and we can't stop doing homework because we'll get bad grades.
I wasn't really able to get the exact point of this poem; but he seems to really like apples.
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