Introduction of the Poem:
The poem “After Apple – Picking” concerns itself with the daily work of gaining a livelihood or rather with the sensation of fatigue and fulfilment after the day's work is over. It is basically a pastoral poem and it appeared in Frost's volume of poems called North of Boston. Of the sixteen poems in this volume ten are pastorals and all but three are set in New England. The poem vividly represents an experience in simple, casual yet exact way. The lines have “the enchantment of a lingering dream.”
Summary of the Poem:
This poem, “After Apple – picking”, may be called the chewing of cud activity of a man who has been picking apples and though he is very tired and drowsy, his task is yet not over. As an indication of his unfinished task he points out that his ladders, a fork like tod to climb, to still there on a tree, with its prongs raised towards the sky. Besides, there is a cork which yet is not full. It is just possible that there are a few more apples by the side of the ladder, hanging by the bough, he did not pick. But the man is now exhausted (physically and mentally both). It is winter night and the essential quality of such nights, i.e. sleepiness, is weighing down the atmosphere. This sleepiness has been infused by the sweet smell of apples. Now the man is about to fall asleep. Because of the drowsy state of his mind he finds all the things around him as strange and he is unable to get rid of this feeling of strangeness. The man got this sense of strangeness from a glass like sheet of ice, which he removed from watery surface of his drinking vessel, and through which he looked around and found that the grass there was as white as snow. The sheet of ice melted in his hand, so he dropped it down and it broke into pieces. But just before the sheet fell upon the ground the man was about to fall asleep.
Just at that time when he was about to sleep, he was able to tell what the shape of things in his dream was going to be. In his dream he saw enlarged apples coming to and going out of his view. These apples were here, there and everywhere, hanging by the stem and by the flowery twigs. He would saw every reddish brown spot on the apples clearly. Not only this he also felt the pressure of the wing of the ladder on the arch under his foot, besides the pain caused by it.
Now the man seems to have fallen asleep. He feels that the ladder is shaking with the bending of boughs. Besides he also hears deep thundering sounds of carts carrying lead on load of apples to the underground store - house.
Lines 27 to 36. The man is now tired beyond the proper limit, measure, he is also fed up with the bumper crop of apples, he himself, had once desired. Now there were thousands of apples to handle, to fondle, to put down carefully and not to let any of them fall to the ground. This last caution is necessary because if an apple falls to the ground it is discarded as uneatable, even though it is not broken or spiked by stubble below. This rejected apple has to go to the cider press for the extraction of its juice.
Now the man prepares himself to go to sleep. But before that he surmises as to what things are likely to disrupt his sleep. The man is not certain as to what kind of sleep it will be. If the wood - chuck is already not fallen asleep it can tell what kind of sleep the man has gone. It may be long winters sleep of the wood-chuck itself or an ordinary human sleep.
Critical Appreciation of the Poem:
Introduction:
“After Apple – Picking” is a significant nature lyric of Robert Frost. The setting of the poem is New England, but as Lynen observes, “an appreciation of such a poem as “After Apple – Picking” is no more dependent upon direct knowledge of New Hampshire farm life than actual acquaintance with the Provencal landscape is necessary for the enjoyment of a painting by Cezanne.” He tries to prove his point by pointing out the fact that the regional poetry of Frost was first appreciated in England and not in America. The point is obvious: there is sufficient imagination to appeal to readers in all regions and all climates.
Thought-Content:
The poem describes the experiences of an apple - picker who has been working throughout the day with his long two - pointed ladder which is still looking towards the sky. He can still see the unpicked apples on the trees. But he is obviously tired and is in no mood of picking apples any further. He asserts, “I am done with apple - picking now.” The smell of the apples and tiredness combine to make the apple - picker drowsy and he yearns to lie down to sleep. His thinking gets confused. He feels that he can anticipate the dream that he will have after the sleep. He thinks that he will dream of the apple - appearing and disappearing and hear the rumbling sound of the loads of apples. He is not sure what kind of sleep it will be - whether it will be the long hibernating sleep of animals as the woodchuck has or that it will be something really human. Fact and fancy get intermingled in the poem. R. A. Brown remarks: As the apple - picker drowses off, narrative of fact about the ice skimmed from the trough gets mixed up with dream, and the time references, and so the tenses, become a bit confused:
"But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.”
“Could tell” and “was about to take” seem to refer both to the morning and to the present state of “Drowsing off.”
Sensuousness:
The poem has abundant sensuous appeal and brings to the mind the highly sensuous poems of John Keats. Just as Keats’ “Ode to Autumn” reminds us of the fume of poppies, in the same way the scent of apples here has a drowsing effect. In this connection Untermeyer observes: “After Apple – Picking” is so vivid a memory of experience that the reader absorbs it physically. He smells the heady scent of apples; senses the strangeness of the world as it seems to the overtired worker; feels how definitely the instep arch
…. not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder - round.
It is all so simple and exact, so casual yet so original. A poem of reality, After Apple - Picking has the enchantment of a lingering dream.
Symbolic Meaning:
“After Apple – Picking” can also be appreciated on a symbolic level. Cleanth Brooks remarks: “The concrete experience of apple- picking is communicated firmly and realistically, but the poem invites a symbolic extension of meaning. The drowsiness which the speaker feels after the completion of the task is associated with the cycle of seasons. Its special character is emphasised by a bit of magic, even though the magic is whimsical”:
"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 heavy grass,
It melted, and I let it fall and break."
The speaker goes on to speculate playfully on the form that his dreaming will take. It will surely be about apples for his instep arch still feels the pressure of the ladder rung, and his cars are still full of the rumble of apples rolling into the cellar bin. But he returns to the subject of his drowsiness and the phrase “whatever sleep it is” renews the suggestion that his sleepiness may not be merely ordinary human sleepiness:
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 end of the labour leaves the speaker with a sense of completion and fulfilment — in short, with a sense of ripeness which savours of the fruit which he has been working and of the season in which the work has been done. The ice sheet through which he has looked, signals the termination of harvest, and the summons to the winter sleep of nature. The woodchuck has already begun its hibernation. The speaker does not over - emphasise his own connection with nature — the reference to the woodchuck is merely one more piece of whimsy, but the connection is felt.
The poem even suggests that sleep is like the sleep of death. We are not to feel that the speaker is essentially conscious of this. But perhaps we are to feel that were the analogy to present itself to him, he would accept it. In the context defined in the poem, death might be considered as something eminently natural as a sense of fulfilment mixed with a great deal of honest weariness and a sense of something well done — though with too much drowsiness, for one to bother that every one of the apples had not been picked.”
Technique of the Poem:
The technical innovations of the poem are not the less striking. The sentences have an incantatory magic. From the opening lines, matter - of - fact details fall into curious chain - like sentences which are rich in end rhymes. There are many echoes too. But - although the voice seems to fall off into rhyming fits of insomnia, the fits shape themselves into subtle patterns of rhymes. Each phase of reminiscence forms a separate unit of syntax. Without a full stop within the unit each unit becomes in effect a stanza marked off by one or two rhyming seals. In many cases the last word introduces a new rhyme which will be picked up in the next stanza; or else it completes a rhyme used earlier.
As Robert Doyle has said, the stuff of “After Apple – Picking” is common. But the distinction of the poem is that the writer has created a tone that will govern the reader's response to the material. The poem has a freshness that is absorbing. The apple - picker has done the day's job, yet he has by him an empty barrel and there is a bough he has not picked upon. But he is tired completely. The scent of the apples is heavy on him and he must now run home and drowse off. At this stage in the poem is a magnificent description of the strangeness of the world of nature as it seems to the over - tired worker:
"Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end.
And every flock of russet showing clear,
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder - round.
I feel the ladder away as the boughs bend
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load of apples coming in
For I have had too much
Of apple - picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired."
The above passage is significant in a number of ways. The speaker portrays the scene in a graphic way, attending to each detail, and managing the tone. In order that the tone of the poem may be neat and clear, Frost adjusts the words and the phrases with untiring artistry. The couplets are managed in such a way as to convey the feeling behind the apple - picker's utterances. Brower rightly says that Frost's use of the couplets is revolutionary. His couplets have shaken the classical and the romantic patterns, “and if they have any affinity with earlier couplet styles, it is with the verse of social talk of Swift and Goldsmith.” The rhythmic pattern of the lines has a forward movement. It is born out of the dramatic setting and the initial commitment in tone, and thus it changes with the change in the mood and tone of the speaker. “After apple – picking” is a narrative in first person, and Frost here is the master of the situation.
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