Critical Analysis of After Apple Picking by Robert Frost

Frost begins his poem with graphic visual imagery, “my two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree”. At once the reader is offered a vivid mental picture of what the poet sees. Whilst the ladder and the tree are synonymous with picking apples, the poet’s choice in the word “through” requires more serious contemplation. The ladder is sticking through the treetop, implying that the climber’s destination is not the tree but somewhere above. This line of thought also allows readers to presage a biblical allusion in the form of “Jacob’s Ladder”: or a dreamt-about ladder to heaven. Giving the dream like quality of the poem, it is conceivable that the poet is implying that he is about to journey to heaven Vis a Vis death. Hence, the theme of sleep and death are jointly introduced through this biblical allusion. This line of analysis is followed through by the poet’s confirmation that the ladder is pointed toward “heaven still”. The word still may be taken to mean two things: on one hand, the ladder is pointing “still higher” than the apple tree; however, it can also be attached toward the following line where it would read “Still…there’s a barrel I didn’t fill”. The concept of regret is thus brought to the fore. Frost uses the biblical allusion as well as the subtle placement of his diction to introduce his major themes of Sleep, Death and regret within the first two lines. It is as if the poet has these thoughts at the front of his mind and cannot restrain them: alluding to the fact that his time is running out. One would also do well to note that these themes have been introduced through the medium of visual imagery- of a ladder and a tree, of apples and a barrel. This falls in line Frost’s general method and can be explored throughout the poem.

The poet’s acute sense of aesthetic accuracy can be seen in the next stanza where he pays notice to a paltry “two or three” apples, regretting that he didn’t pick them. This seems to be a tip of the hat to the saying “one in the hand is better than two in the bush”- that the poet cannot appreciate his own efforts and resigns himself to saying “I am done” shows that he is disappointed with himself and that he gives up. In typical transcendentalist homage to feeling, Frost has brought out another emotion in his poem.

Frost makes use of kinesthetic imagery when he says “winter sleep”- this adds further complexities to Frost’s meaning. Reader’s are already aware that Frost’s narrator is nodding off in the dreary flow of the poem, but the addition of “winter” gives pause for thought. ‘Winter” imparts a chilling and ominous feel to the sleep the poet is thinking about; like hibernation (Frost was a farmer) it would take a long time and like the barren fields it would be devoid of life. The concepts of sleep and death are thus interlinked through the choice of diction and the imagery created. The poet then combines the kinesthetic imagery with an olfactory note as he alludes to the “scent of apples”. The permeating sense of his work haunts him and recalls the theme of regret, when he cannot forget his failure to pick them all. Readers may see in this image man’s failure to grasp all available opportunity and the ensuing regret when one looks back on life.

As if the writer is “drowsing off” and his hurrying to complete his narration, the few line seems hurried. The repeated use of the word “I” seem panicked, as if the poet is trying to justify his falling asleep or his failure. Against the haunting smell of his failure, “scent of apples”, the poet juxtaposes his “strangeness” of his sight against the down-to-earth drinking trough. The metaphysical strangeness of the former and the common image of the latter are only brokered through the transcendental window pane. The window pane is an interesting image: it can both enable and distort sight. That it has distorted sight in this instance, transforming common sustenance (drinking trough) into strangeness, implies that it is being used as a synonym for the poet’s fatigue. This is emphasised through the poet’s inability to “rub” the strangeness from his sight. It is as if his eyes are the “window pane[s]” in question and lends a spiritual aspect to the physical eyes- even as the common trough is distorted by strangeness. Once again, this falls in with the transcendentalist notion of spirituality in everyday life.

Against the backdrop of the apple picker’s “Jacob’s ladder” is the world of “hoary grass”- the contrasting imagery of calms skies against the rough backdrop gives another concept for the Apple to represent. Thus far it has symbolized lost opportunities that a dying man regrets; now it could be used as a biblical allusion of man’s fall from the Garden of Eden. Absurd imagery follows this as Frost states that the glass “melted” and broke- once again highlighting the fantastical quality of his existence.

Line 14, like line 6 begins with a “But”- the narrator attempts a volte-face. In line 14, he states that he is well though his previous actions, dropping the pane of glass, seems to show otherwise. This constant change of character has two purposes- it first demonstrates his muddled state of mind in his fatigue but also serves to create a distinction between his two topics. Such literary connotations match the distinguishing of heaven and earth, the perfect and imperfect, that Frost alludes to throughout the poem.

When the poet states that he “could tell what form [his] dreaming would take”, it begs the question of continuity. It is as if he woke before work into a kind of reality that had all the strangeness of dream; there exists a curious suspension of reality and fantasy for the poet does not seem to know which one he exists in. Indeed, the conceptual frame of the poem is held together by the way "dream" gets stated in terms of waking experience, waking experience in terms of "dream." This senseless state of events is compounded by the disturbing dream the apple picker has: “magnified apples…russet showing clear” shows how he not only dreams of his work but also that each apple seems amazingly detailed. The images in the poet’s dream are every bit as vivid as reality- begging the question if he could tell the difference between the two. This is emphasised by the paradoxical use of “stem end and blossom end”- as if the two polarities- like the polarities of dreams and reality- could be joined. The apple picker’s use of diction thus mirrors reality.

The biblical allusion to Jacob’s ladder is explored once again in line 20 as the poet speaks of climbing the ladder in his dream, including kinesthetic imagery as he “feels the ladder sway” and “instep arch”. This serves two purposes- the fact that he can feel in his dream blurs the line between realities, a recurring image in the poem thus far. It also serves to blur the line between sleep and death- he is, in fact, ascending heaven as if he is dying when he is merely sleeping. The reader’s are led to see death and sleep, reality and dreaming as similar qualities.

Line 23 begins a wretched continuity of events highlights the obsession with the physical and sensuous approaches by which the speaker seems to transfer his anxieties of exhaustion to the apples, so many thousands of which are beyond the control of his selection. "Magnified apples" merges both the oneiric world of human desire and the scientific world of instrumental examination. Close examination of nature in its great plurality and in its waste ultimately diminishes the significance of the observer. At once he sees the massive abundance and waste of nature, which overwhelm his own desire as he states, finally, “I have had too much”. Like the waste of nature, the apple as a biblical allusion lends it a more spiritual note: that Frost sees life’s wasted opportunities even as life itself expires or that he sees the waste of man that “fall by the road”. Such analyses are supported by the bulwark of emotions he espouses in a few short lines: frustration in “I have had too much”, fatigue and desire. This plethora of emotion is also supported by the auditory imagery of “the rumbling sound”. In all, the acute sensory awareness of the poet contributes to the transcendentalist sympathies of Frost whilst also highlighting the religious critiques of the poem and the theme of regret.

This theme of regret can be explored in the way the poet laconically states that he is “overtired” of his previous idealism- as if resigning himself to his fate. The choice of diction in Harvest remains unexplained- it could refer to the physical apples, the metaphorical chances or to spiritual concepts. This links back to the subject matters of regret, death and sleep- the poet emphasizes his regret in “there were ten thousand thousand”. The repetition of the word thousand seems to emphasize the amount of opportunity he had but yet failed to realize. A sense of frustration is also felt in the plosive “For all” – the poet is frustrated in the immediate categorization and castigation of any apple that fell. The lack of opportunity for the “apple” to prove itself, as it were, is a metaphysical allusion to religion and a critique of categorizing people into “good vs. bad”.

Frost keeps the most intriguing devices for his poem to the last. Thus far, Frost has confined himself to the explicit use of imagery and an acute notice of emotions to serve as a medium for his thoughts. However, the languid tone that pervades the poem is succored in the last passage when he talks unambiguously about sleep for the first time. This is made apparent in his choice of diction: “One” instead of “I”. By snapping out of his first person narrative, the apple picker distances him from the dreamlike quality of the poem and into a sharper dialogue. The selection of the woodchuck is a metaphor for physical sleep; however, Frost also implies sit may be some kind of longer sleep. That the poet remains unsure and undecided by the end of the poem shows suspension between not-life and not-death; where language is narcotized toward incoherence and lack of control. This final analysis makes sense in the methods explored earlier: the 2 possible analyses applied to the poem and the lack of resolution by the poems end. In the end, the poet shows that his exertions have left him so fatigue that he could “sleep like the dead”. Indeed the final line expresses a diminished sense of "human sleep," a diminished sense of the labor, knowledge, and aspiration. It is the lack of definite analyses or poet’s intention that is the poet’s purpose here- to create and undecided poem, mimicking his own fatigue and the “drowsing off” of the speaker as he rambles on.

The last point to be analysed can be found in Frost’s style. He resorts to biblical allusion at several points, which his intended audience- 20th century Americans- would be able to grasp with ease. This is combined with abstract metaphor for sleep as death, sky for heaven, ladder for ascension and hoary grass for earth. Frost completes this jigsaw with his acute sensory perception, explicit use of imagery and multiple emotions (fatigue, desire, frustration, resignation). This gives it the unique transcendentalist touch- indeed; Frost seems to avoid labeling his poem with a definite message. Whilst the biblical allusion ascribes to his audience’s spiritual consciousness his use of imagery induces emotions which mirror his own. “After Apple Picking” by Robert Frost        is an ambiguous poem that should be celebrated for its lack of a definite meaning and acclaimed for its unique transcendentalist nature.