Deep sleep allows the body an escape from time, achieving physical and psychological rejuvenation.

Authors Avatar

Garth H. Hamp

English 1030-03

Critical Analysis Paper

Page

        Deep sleep allows the body an escape from time, achieving physical and psychological rejuvenation.  Various stages of the sleep process pass sequentially before reaching deep sleep.  Robert Frost’s poem “After Apple-Picking,” clearly describes the troubled reality of one individual’s inability to reach deep sleep.  The consequences are distressing and exhausting dreams that consume physical and psychological energy.  The speaker in “After Apple-Picking” characterizes his dreams as intense and haunting in a sleep stage called “human sleep.”  He yearns to reach a deep state of sleep to gain physical and psychological renewal.  Frost uses the term “woodchuck sleep” to represent this sleep stage.  Critic Roy Scheele refers to “woodchuck sleep” as “completely forgetful sleep” (Scheele 148).      

Join now!

The speaker is locked into “human sleep” and experiences intense work dreams.  The third, fourth, and fifth lines of the poem reflect his shortcomings that are manifested in the intense work dreams.  The first is an empty barrel he did not fill.  The second is two or three apples he did not pick upon some bough.  In the speaker’s dream state he obsesses about every single apple he did not harvest.  These reflections of his shortcomings represent a lack of personal worth and inability to achieve goals.  These reminders are agonizing to him.  His only desire is to pass ...

This is a preview of the whole essay