Preview

After Apple Picking by Robert Frost: Poem Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
313 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
After Apple Picking by Robert Frost: Poem Analysis
“After Apple Picking” seems like a sweet and uplifting poem, but it is nothing near that. In this poem Robert Frost illustrates his own death and what he did not finish before he died. He longed to accomplish lots in his life, but for what he did not finish, he is ashamed for. He was grateful for getting to do the tasks he did in his life, but felt like a failure for what he did not finish and succeed in. The man is depressed and unsatisfied with himself. He does not feel he has lived his life to it’s fullest. Nighttime is portrayed many times and is a metaphor for death and depression. He has picked apples, but he has not picked them all, therefore he has not accomplished everything he had hoped to. The ice melted; he preceded to let it fall and break, along with the ice, went all of his dreams. His dreams were shattered, and once again he felt like a failure. “But I am done with apple picking now.” Is a sign that his life is done and over with and it ends in a period to make the point stronger. He has failed in his own eyes. Robert Frost did an excellent job of portraying all of the senses except for one, being taste. The reader can picture him picking the apples, the scent of the apples as he falls asleep, and the feel of the apples as he picked them. The senses are important and most would connect apples with taste before anything else, but he thought different. Sleep was repeated many times, and is symbolized with night, and death. He was unhappy with his accomplishments in life, did not feel like he lived it to the fullest; but what he did not realize, was that he did the best he

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost Outline

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages

    He includes Literal meanings in his poetry and also hidden meanings. He likes to give the reader messages after they read his poems. From his poetry we see allusion, imagery, and symbolism in his poetry to give the reader feelings while reading. Robert Frost is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century,…

    • 1015 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost's “Acquainted with the Night” describes a life that is filled with depression caused by isolation. Many believe this could have been written from Frost's own personal experiences, since it is well known that he experienced a very sad life with the losses of many of his close relatives. This would have left him feeling alone and detached, therefore giving him the inspiration for this poem. When examining the title's literal meaning, one can see Frost’s illustration of how he is very familiar with these dark and lonely feelings that seem to come with the night. The night, and these feelings, are nothing new to him. He uses an exceptionally descriptive setting, diverse symbols, and a unique style to develop his poem. In this poem Frost uses many symbols like the rain, the watchman, and the moon to illustrate the speaker’s depression, as…

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    As days drag by for the man in the poem whom lost his family, what is he to intrigue himself with? Though it is disconsolate to be without your family, the man fortunately has an orchard of apples to engage himself with. When his family was with him he took care of them, likewise he takes care of his apples now since his family has left him.…

    • 302 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Frost is an important writer due to the fact that he helped renew popular interest in American poetry by refusing to write with the academic modernist style used at the time, he chose to be different. Frost wrote about nature and rural life in a traditional yet complex way that grabbed the interest of many people. Some of his best works that I particularly like include “The Road Not Taken”, “Home Burial”, and “Fire and Ice”. These poems Frost wrote helped form the conception of Americans as tough, self-sufficient individuals. “Home Burial” was about the overwhelming grief after the death of a child. Frost knew and experienced this first hand due to the loss of quite a few people. “Fire and Ice” considers the apocalyptic end of the world.…

    • 203 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Poem - Loneliness Summary

    • 336 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The similarities of harvesting the apples and harvesting life come from the speakers use of the the words "surrounded by ghosts and memories" (3) and "surrounded by memories and ghosts," (15). These ‘ghosts and memories' are related towards the man's family in line three, and are reused in line fifteen in reference to the trees. The poem ends with the uplifting line "they are waiting for the next harvest with hope." (16) with ‘they' representing not only the trees, but the family as well. This was the author's intent to show the similarities of harvesting crops and harvesting life.…

    • 336 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The author incorporates oodles of metaphors into the poem to depict the speaker’s thoughts and feelings. “Night” is an extended metaphor for the depression the speaker is inflicted with because it is the subject of the rest of the poem. The speaker has “outwalked the furthest city light” which is also a metaphor for depression and loneliness; the speaker is the cause of his solitariness because he walks into a distance himself, and the further he gets, the less light, or felicity he acquires. The metaphor for distance is also present when the speaker hears a “cry” from “far away.” The cry he heard from a horizon was not for him, and that brings about even more alienation and dejection. The “luminary clock” is a metaphor that compares a clock to the moon; the moon is not only the most distal thing in the poem to the speaker but also the radiant thing that reaches him when he is in duskiness.…

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout this poem, the speaker is describing the world around her, which reflects her own feelings of hopelessness. The tone is pure misery, which one can see at the very beginning when the speaker opens the poem with “With blackest moss the flower-plots / Were thickly crusted, one and all:” (1.1-2). The speaker is saying that all she sees around her are flower pots without flowers, but a think black moss covers them. She continues this same tone describing a barn area that has been worn and rusted admitting, “The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:” (1.3-6). Similarly, she keeps this mood through the rest of the six stanzas. Whether she is describing outside, inside or day and night, the natural world around her shares her disposition.…

    • 211 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost's poem, "After Apple-Picking," talks about the opportunities in life. He uses apples as symbols for new opportunities. The speaker is tired after a long day's work of picking apples. Although he is done with his work, he hasn't filled one of the barrels and has also left a few apples on the tree. He also feels that a strange sleep is overpowering…

    • 865 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    "Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost is a poem about a person who is well acquainted with the night. In this poem, the author or the speaker explains why he/she is well acquainted with the night. It seems as the poem progresses that the speaker enjoys walks through the night of a city, and that he also enjoys walks in rainy nights. The speaker goes down a sad area of the city were he encounters a watchman were he/she ignores. When the speakers stop because he/she listens to a cry, which he/she believes is for he/she, as is somebody calling for him/her back or telling him/her goodbye. The cry the speaker heard was not for him/her. Toward the end of the poem the speaker ignores the time in a clock in a sky as is was neither wrong nor right as the speaker has more knowledge of the night than a clock. This poem is about a person who has a more knowledge than anyone or anything else of what the night really means because he/she spend all his nights walking in the night looking for something he lost.…

    • 1065 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost Quick Bio.

    • 353 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In England Frost met many great poets, and had many influencers’. Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves were just a couple names, but they had a huge impact on how he wrote. Continuing to write, Frost moved back to the states to Boston publishing many more great poems. Outliving a lot of people and family, Frost lived to be the age of eighty eight, dying on January 29, 1963. He was buried next to his wife and children, who will go down with the great name of Frost forever. Never forgotten, Frost’s poetry is still read today and used in many ways to help…

    • 353 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Night, the setting gives a variety of moods, from hopeless to happy, which often foreshadows the events to come soon after. Elie Wiesel writes, in many occasions, about the setting being at night when setting a mood of suspense or depressing matters. As the father is away receiving the new orders for their district, “Night fell. Some twenty people wait in the courtyard” (12). The large amount of people sets the mood as a suspenseful one. The people wait eagerly, hoping the news is not as they fear. However, in this novel, night is never cheerful. As the father finally approaches and reveals the news, night had already given the hint that it’s not good. Wiesel mentions the growing darkness as things go from bad, to worse and gives a hopeless setting.…

    • 334 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Night is associated to darkness, emptiness, and sometimes-even loneliness. Robert Frost’s “Acquainted With the Night” shows the character, which is the narrator, being overly too familiar almost friendly with the nighttime. The narrator of the poem is a man who described what he felt as he took a walk at night seemingly searching for something he had apparently lost. This “modernist” character was disposing loneliness throughout the whole poem. He is a representative of the alienated person typical of modern literature because he tried to seek out what were causing his loneliness from his environment.…

    • 432 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” remains one of my personal favorites in spite of many years of literary study. The advice of this poem has helped me to understand that when I choose atypical paths it creates a ripple effect that produces differences so profound I can hardly imagine my life without that nonstandard choice. However, I had to realize on my own that every choice has the capacity to become such a divergence. With this realization comes a certain weight to daily choices, and anything beyond that calls for careful thought and planning. The world is full of uncertainties, but assiduous preparation can produce wise choices that lead to the fulfillment of long term goals.…

    • 157 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As noted above, Frost uses many techniques to explain the significant of the poem. The most important aspect of the poem is the extended metaphor of the…

    • 583 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During his life, Robert Frost, the icon of American literature, wrote many poems that limned the picturesque American Landscape. His mostly explicated poems “Birches” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” reflect his young manhood in the rural New England. Both of these poems are seemingly straightforward but in reality, they deal with a higher level of complexity and philosophy. Despite the difference in style and message, “Birches” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” are loaded with vivid imagery and symbolism that metaphorically depict the return to the nature and childhood, the struggle between reality and imagination, and also freedom and captivation.…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays