Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Robert Frost was an American poet whose work was first published in England and then he became popular in America too. He was born on March 26, 1874, and died on January 29, 1963.
The first poem that he sold for publication was My Butterfly, An Elegythat was published on November 8, 1894, in The Independent of New York.
Robert Frost was known for his realistic depictions of rural life. He worked as a farmer for 9 years, after which he returned to teaching and writing.
Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson introduced and popularized poetry in free verse and it gained momentum in America. The most common form of poetry in modernist America was free verse. However, Robert Frost liked the traditional, contained, a metrical form of poetry. He often commented that poetry in free verse is like “tennis with the net down.’ Furthermore, most of the other poets of his time were writing about science, solipsism, or the religion of the past century. Robert Frost rejected both trends with his use of idiomatic language and ordinary, everyday subject matter in traditional poetry forms. Robert Frost is the only English poet to win four Pulitzer Prizes for poetry.
“After Apple-Picking” is one of the most celebrated and admired poems by the American poet Robert Frost. It first appeared in his collection ‘North of Boston’ in 1923.
Structure of After Apple-Picking
After Apple-Picking is somewhat surreal in nature. He always disliked free verse but to maintain coherence with the conventional form of American poetry, he wrote this poem in lines of varied length and irregular rhymes that stretch the sense of sound and pattern.
The poem has 42 lines and each line ends with a full rhyme. The rhyme scheme continues to change throughout the poem in a dreamy way to match with the narrator’s tired and dream-like situation. While the poem contains mixed rhymes and varied meter, around 2/3rd of the lines are in iambic pentameter. The opening line of the poem has twelve syllables and is an iambic hexameter. The whole poem is written in first person narrative form in which a tired farmer describes the melancholic exhaustion after the intense and long labor of apple picking. Robert Frost offers metaphoric depth from simple imageries while dealing with the major themes of a) Renewal and death, following a working life fulfilled, b) Psychic disturbance as in the biblical Garden of Eden, c) Routine and reality versus free time, and d) the unconscious, and Time and the creative/poetic act.
Summary of After Apple-Picking
After Apple-Picking explores the relationship between humans and the natural world while depicting the special scenario of the end of the apple harvest and the subsequent physical and psychic consequences of the tiresome ordeal on the farmer near the end of his work. The poem shows the after-effects of repetitive creative work at the last hour when the worker is almost exhausted. The poet metamorphically suggests that the Apples are the all desires, achievements, goals, and victories of the man who is on the verge of his life. He has achieved a lot, but there are still some apples left to be taken. But he is tired and understands the uncertainty of life.
Lines 1-13
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Besides it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
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 hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
The narrator begins while giving the technical descriptions of apple harvest as he is picking the fruits. The two-pointed ladder which is used to climb upon an apple tree to pick apples is kept alongside a barrel that is yet to be filled. The narrator is too tired With sore feet and aching muscles, as it is the last hour of the work while he diligently kept working throughout the day, picking up ripe apples one by one. The narrator is too exhausted to worry about a few remaining apples not picked yet. He feels exhausted from the repetitive work and declares he is done with apple picking. It is winter and the whole atmosphere is full of the aroma of fresh apples. As he rests while still on the ladder, he thinks perhaps he sits and drinks his homemade cider, or rests on his bed. He is completely tired and as night approaches, he feels sleepy. That reminds him of the pane of glass he found from his drinking trough. When he looked at his image in that glass, he couldn’t recognize himself. He looked so tired and strange. He let the glass break that shattered his image.
Lines 13-29
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on 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 narrator noticed the change and strangeness in the mirror but he is soo tired and sleepy that he doesn’t care much. He is gradually submitting to the sleepiness that is appearing heavier than before. The narrator is liking this embrace of sleepiness and thinks of the dreams he will have. He knows that he has been infatuated and involved with his chase of apples so much that even in his dreams, he will see nothing but more and magnified apples as they will appear and disappear. He will be clearly seeing the stem and fresh blossoms of apples. He then describes the act of picking apples and exclaims that he has had a good harvest as he can clearly listen to the sound of loads of apples coming into the cellar bin. Even now, when some of the apples are yet to be picked, he feels overtired and has already declared, heck with the apples, I am done. He then remembers how much he wished to grow apples as if it was his only desire. But one gets tired of chasing their dearest desires. Often one has to struggle so much to attain their goals that in the end, when they are so near to their goal, one fails to cherish them. The narrator is fed up with the labor which comes with harvesting and he sees in human nature as people get tired of even what they love and desire the most.
The apple itself is strongly associated with the Garden of Eden, Eve, and the Tree of knowledge of good and evil. The narrator is also suggesting that apples are like the desires he had during his life. However, he doesn’t correlate it with evil. His ladder symbolizes another Biblical expression of Jacob’s ladder up to heaven. But he is bound with the ladder by his instep arch, which keeps him feeling the burden of the ladder and the backache it creates. He has to reap what he has sowed to cherish the apples, his desires.
Lines 30-42
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
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 narrator is overwhelmed by the huge harvest of apples. He exclaims he has touched thousands thousand of apples, the desires that he successfully fulfilled. He carefully lifted each of the apples and did not let it fall while cherishing it in his hands. Each of his desires for which he struggled hard was precious to him. He remained careful because he knew that if the apple falls, it will end up in a heap of bins, ruined and wasted. The narrator is almost asleep and he didn’t need to count sheep as he had apples to count to get to sleep. His ladder appears like the ladder to heaven while he is about to enter the wonderland of his dreams. However, unlike Alice, who had a rabbit in the wonderland, the narrator sees only a woodchuck (a ground squirrel) who is about to hibernate as winter is coming. The narrator wonders if the sleep which is getting heavier and heavier on him with each passing moment will be like a human sleep, a hibernation after which, he will wake up afresh? The narrator knows that the woodchuck’s sleep will be troubleless. He wished the woodchuck might have solved this puzzle to him and cleared if it is just a human sleep or the long immortal sleep that comes at the end of life, but the woodchuck is already in hibernation.
The varying rhyming scheme of the poem creates interest while encouraging the reader to pay more attention to the words and their metaphorical meanings. The iambic pentameter is dominant in the mix with dimeter and trimeter, giving a reflection of the loss of control as a person slips into sleep. The important symbols used in the poem are as follows-
After Apple Picking: After Apple Picking as a whole poem symbolizes life and death.
Apple Picker: The role of the apple picker (speaker/narrator/poet) clearly symbolizes the uncertainty of life as a farmer/worker.
Apple Picking: Apple picking symbolizes worldly affairs in routine daily life.
Apple: Apples are the symbol of desire, deeds, and actions in life.
Apple Tree: Apple tree is a symbol of this world that provides a different way to achieve goals.
Empty Barrel: Empty barrel in After Apple Picking symbolizes the unfulfilled desires, wishes, and goals of a man.
Woodchuck: Woodchuck symbolizes a long sleep that might be a normal sleep or death.
Drowsiness: It symbolizes tiredness due to excessive engagement in worldly affairs.
Evening: Evening and the start of dark/night symbolize the end of life or impending death.
Ladder: The ladder symbolizes the technique and ways to earn goals.
Swaying of Ladder: The swaying ladder symbolizes the difficulties and hurdles that men have to undergo during their time in this world.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of English American literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
No comments:
Post a Comment