Commentary on After Apple-Picking Essay

The short poem After Apple-Picking by Robert Frost tells the story of a dying man who is looking back on his life. He regrets the things that he has not been able to accomplish because of the situation that Apple-Picking has presented to him. The poem consists of different tones that separate the poem into two parts. The contrasting tones help create a central theme of lifes work along with the desire for success and meaning. The poet uses metaphors, imagery, and diction to create these contrasting tones.

The poems tone in the beginning portion has a dreamy and peaceful feel that is created due to Frosts use of metaphors. Toward heaven still, shows the peaceful ending to an old mans life cause it shows a steady transition that the man endures as he looks back on his life. The poem is unclear and leaves the reader to interrupt the meaning of certain phrases. Essence of winter sleep is on the night allows the reader to understand whether sleep is death. However, the phrase still presents multiple peaceful connotations. When the poems tone shifts to a more somber and tired tome in a peaceful environment, metaphors continue to help portrait the tone of the poem. There were then thousand thousand fruit to touch shows just how many missed opportunities the old man has had in a sad way. The whole poem is made ambiguous because Frost leaves it up to its readers to decide whether it refers simply to sleep or a deeper sleep such as death.

Frost uses many types of imagery throughout the poem that appeals to our senses. Because of the huge variety in images that the poem if filled with enables its readers to image the experience of apple picking itself. The first line My long two-pointed ladders sticking through a tree give the reader a visual portrait of a long pointed ladder nestled high in an apple tree. The poem also employs auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, organic and kinesthetic images. All these types of images convey the peaceful and somber tones the poem presents in its two parts. Frost continues with these images so that the reader envisions exactly what the old man is feeling at all these differing moments that he is describing in his life.

The diction in the poem also contributes to the development of the tones inside of the poem. In the beginning, the tone is one of a dreamy, uncertain nature. Words such as strangeness,heaven, and dreaming are all examples of the diction that contain surreal and dreamlike connotations that play an important role in the forming of the tone. Frost also uses words like overtired, cherish, and sleep to create part twos somber tome. Overtired shows the growing weariness in the old man while the word cherish evokes a solemn feeling of attachment to all that an individual has left. Sleep is constantly repeated, not only to help show the tired town. But also allude to the notion of death as to create a somber tome.

The poem creates two contrasting tones that shift from one to the other with the help of metaphors, imagery, and diction. The poem states with a dreamy tone cause of words like heaven and continue toward a more saddened tone with the final few lines because the speaker seems to be troubled whether or not it is an everlasting sleep or just a regular nights sleep. These literary devices and imagery help convey that it is important of making the most of what you are given in life.