Critical Appreciation After Apple-Picking

 

Critical Appreciation After Apple-Picking

“After Apple-Picking” is one of the best lyrics in English poetry. It belongs to the volume of poems titled North of Boston, published in 1914. It depicts the poet’s attitude to Nature. Here we are going to discuss the summary and critical appreciation of After Apple-Picking. So, let's start.

Summary of After Apple-Picking

The Speaker’ S ‘long, two-pointed ladder's sticking through-a trée towards heavert. There is still a barre] unfilled, and two apples unpicked. The-speaker feels drowsy, being in the scent of apples. He cannot rub off the strangeness from his sight which he got from looking through a pane of glass he skimmed that morning from the drinking trough and held against the world of hoary grass. It melted and he. let it fall and break. 

But before it fell, he was well on his way to sleep. So “he could tell what form of dreaming he would have. In his dream magnified apples appear and disappear, and stem end and blossom end, and every fleck of russet appears clearly. The speaker’s instep -arch keeps the ache, and the pressure of a ladder. He feels the ladder sway as the boughs bend. He keeps hearing from the cellar bin the tumbling sound: of loads of apples coming in. 

This is because he-has had too much of apple picking. He is overtired of the harvest that he himself desires. There were thousands of apples still to touch, and fondle in hand, and let fall to the ground. Whether bruised or not, every apple went to cider: apple heap as of no worth. One can see what sort of sleep the speaker is going to have, and what is going to disturb it. Perhaps the woodchuck could have said whether it is like his long Sleep, or like some human sleep. 

Important point of the poem: Literally, the poem means the speaker’s tiredness after apple-picking, and his consequent dream about the too profuse supply of apples, and metaphorically it means we cannot finish our work even for what we desire, and die when you! work remains unfinished. The poem “After Apple-Picking” is one of the most famous poems of Robert Frost. Within a short space speaks volumes. 

Critical Appreciation After Apple-Picking

On the literal level, the poem describes an apple-picker’s tiredness, and consequent drowsiness, even before he finishes his work of apple-picking, and his possible dream of too profuse supply of apples (from Nature) during his imminent sleep. Metaphorically, the poem means that a human being desires many things in the world during his lifetime, but he becomes too tired to realize them before his death. The speaker of the poem says: 

I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. 

The speaker’s possible dream of too profuse supply of apples symbolizes his desires that remain unfulfilled to a large extent before he dies. This message of the poem reminds us of the four lines of Frost’s another poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” where the following lines occur: 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, 

But I have promises to keep, 

And miles to go before I sleep, 

And miles to go before | sleep. 

This is a lyric, as has been determined by some critics. Abrams defines a lyric as a “non-narrative poem presenting a single speaker who expresses a state of mind or a process of thought and feeling.” According to this definition it is a lyric poem. The speaker expresses his own feelings and imagination about apple-picking.

The poem has no stanzas. The whole poem is one stanza. The lines are in free verse in which rhyme is not an essential element. But still, there are some internal rhymes and end-rhymes that impart musicality to the poem. There are some assonances and consonances as well which add necessary melody to the poem. 

In the sentences. “Towards heaven still,/ And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill” we find the end rhyme: “still” rhymes with “fill”, but the latter line has also an internal rhyme: the word “barrel” rhymes with the word “fill” of the same line. The repetition of “L” sound in “melted”, “let” and “fall” jg an example of consonance. Assonance occurs in the repetition of “g> sound in the words like “Magnified”, “apples”, “appear” and “disappear”. 

There are also repetitions of the same word in some lines. For example, “end” has been repeated in the line “Stem end and blossom end”, and the word “thousand” in the line “There were ten thousand fruit to touch.” The lines are of unequal length. There are lines as short as “For all,” and as long a line as “I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough”. 

The speaker of the poem is a symbol of everyman. A man desires many things in life, but he cannot realize them all. The speaker’s going to sleep is everyman’s end of life, leaving many things still undone." 

Taken in all, the poem is a successful lyric. It expresses the poet’s view of life and his attitude to Nature: nature is not friendly to man though she provides many things desired by man sometimes even in profession. Man’s life ends, with many of his desires unfulfilled.