How does Robert Frost use rural imagery to suggest life's journey?

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How does Robert Frost use rural imagery to suggest life’s journey in After Apple Picking and The Road Not Taken?

 

In the poem After Apple Picking the literal meaning is after many long days of work after the apple harvest, the speaker is tired of apple picking and the narrator reflects upon what he has done and what he has left undone. Ever since the morning, when he looked through a sheet of ice lifted from the surface of the water trough he has felt drowsy and dreamy. Though his ladder is still leaning against the tree and he has failed to pick all the apples.  Even if the harvest is unfinished he knows it must be over as winter is coming and he now feels weary and experiences sleep coming on, but he begins to wonder whether or not is normal sleep or something deeper.

   The literal meaning of the poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ is it is about a traveller who is walking in the woods and has come upon two roads. The traveller cannot travel both roads and thus must make a decision which one to walk. He evaluates both roads and chooses the road less travelled realizing that he cannot back. The poem ends by the traveller stating that his choosing the road less travelled has made all the difference.

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    In After Apple Picking the apples can be seen as a metaphor for the choices in life that people are ultimately responsible for the choices they pick. This is a very simple and straight forward situation and effective metaphor for displaying the idea of picking apples with the idea of grasping at opportunities we have or choices in life. This is also the same in The Road Not Taken as one of the tones of the poem could be regret due to choices not taken, as he could only go down one road, therefore would have to make ...

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