After Apple Picking

Part I of Essay
Set in the evening of a late autumn day at the end of harvest time, Robert Frost’s “After Apple-Picking” can be interpreted in two ways. The first is that the poem is an insight into Frost’s thoughts on the triviality of life, especially his own. The second is that it is ....

Part II of Essay
.... is in the first six lines. The ladder, which points “toward heaven,” represents the speaker’s climb through life toward death and heaven and the barrel and apples left on the tree represent things he regrets having or not having done during his lifetime. But in line six he says that he is “done with apple-picking now,” which sounds as if he’s saying that what’s done is done and he must accept it. It is almost as if he is having a conflict within himself as to whether he should be content with his life or not. The “sleep” that the speaker ....