What is one prominent theme in Robert Frost's "After Apple Picking," and how does the poem develop it?

Answer 1

One prominent theme in Robert Frost's "After Apple Picking" is the cycle of life and death. Frost opens the poem with the image of an apple orchard -- such rural New England imagery is prominent in his poetry. The speaker's ladder points toward "heaven still," and yet he cannot climb it because he's plagued by reminders of the tasks that he's still to complete on Earth. These loose ends are signified here by images of apples left unpicked and barrels left unfilled.

The speaker settles his anxiety about these undone chores, writing, "But I am done with apple picking now." This line moves the poem forward on a literal, narrative level -- informing the reader that we have left the orchard. Additionally, if apple picking serves as a metaphor for the daily tasks of living, this statement issues a resignation: The speaker is dying, or hoping for death.

The poem's narrative then moves to the speaker's bed, where he dozes off after a day of apple picking. He reflects, "Essence of winter sleep is on the night." This winter sleep seems more foreboding than the autumnal slumber that might follow a typical apple-picking excursion. The cold, dark connotations of this phrase evoke a sense of death.

In the following stanzas, Frost simulates the sensation of dreaming by pulling apples into the realm of the unreal and making them appear strange, as in the lines: "Magnified apples appear and disappear..." As his speaker weaves between dreaming and wakefulness, he is prevented from surrendering to his dream by reminders of work left to do in the orchard, as in the line: "The rumbling sound of load on load of apples coming in..."

In the poem's final stanzas, the speaker expounds upon his final resignation, writing: "I am overtired/Of the great harvest I myself desired..." He is feeling exhausted by the 'great harvest' of his life. Here, the 'great harvest' of his life. Here, the term 'harvest' could symbolize the daily tasks of living, or the responsibilities of child-rearing and sustaining the lives he's brought into the world. Frost's personal life was full of grief: In his lifetime, he had to bury his mother, father, sister, wife, and four of his six children.

In the next lines, he defines life by a sense of failure and foreboding: "There were ten thousand fruit to touch/Cherish in hand, lift down and not let fall..." This line reveals that his life has been defined by responsibilities -- to sustain life, to 'keep fruit from touching the ground.' He then expands upon the stakes of his responsibility, writing: "For all that touched the Earth/No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble/Went surely to the apple cider heap/As of no worth." No matter how promising or healthy they were, the apples that he let drop for any reason fell into a scrap pile ('as of no worth') to be forgotten.

He ends the poem on a vaguely ominous note, "One can see what will trouble/This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is..." Here, he continues to complicate the meaning of the sleep he's seeking. The ambiguity allows for the possibility that the speaker himself does not know whether he is seeking sleep or death. He concludes, "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." The question he poses at the end of the poem is rife with meaning. He wonders whether his sleep will be transformative and primal (as with the woodchuck's final hibernation, which the speaker likens to death) or just 'some human sleep' -- a mundane dormancy that will deliver the speaker in the morning back to his daily chores.