After Apple-Picking
BY ROBERT FROST
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside 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.
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.
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.
This poem works in a state that is a continual confusion of dream and knowledge, between the human idea of nature and its elusive reality always on the verge of transformation. Which is why I think it is so comparable to The Posionwood Bible, because the Prices were always on the edge of what was reality and what was their inability to see the objective truth. “It’s frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known(Kingsolver 197).“ There is this constant internal animosity between knowledge and what their initial vision was. They went to Africa not expecting the things that would happen and their dreams were constantly shattered by reality. The man picking apples felt these similar concepts. He began turning something that was as simple as apple-picking into something fundamentally divine. It is embedded within the human nature, that we can find meaning and purpose in anything. The poem also discusses a “Long sleep, as I describe its coming on” which I believe is perceived as death. This also adds to that elusive idea of reality portrayed through nature, the constant cycle of life and death and how it effects all living things. Death is also very prevalent when Kingsolver writes “I used to threaten Ruth May’s life so carelessly just to make her behave. Now I had to face the possibility that we really could lose her(Kingsolver 130).“ Death seemed to always be at the Prices doorstep especially when Ruth was bitten by the snake. As in the poem, death is part of the journey, and it is not given any negative connotation. Instead it’s just compared to the “essence of winter sleep”, which can easily be portrayed as a season, always coming and going. I think that is why I love this poem, due to how Robert Frost takes something as simple as apple-picking and turns it into something profound about the human nature. Similarly, Barbara Kingsolver takes a unique family with a diverse range of perceptions and makes direct connections to the political and cultural awareness that is much needed in western civilization.
The Poisonwood Bible Blog 