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Analysis Of After Apple-Picking By Robert Frost

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In his poem “After Apple-Picking,” Robert Frost tells the story of an apple-picker who believes that any task completed incorrectly is worthless. Frost’s vivid descriptions of the apple-picker’s experience engage the reader in the poem, causing them to identify with his perspective. However, Frost simultaneously questions the reliability of his judgment by using the metaphor of the apple-picker looking through a window and the exclusion of sensory details to emphasize his detachment from reality. Frost begins “After Apple-Picking” by describing a scene in New England at the end of the apple-picking season. The poem takes place in late October, after the apple harvesting season has ended but just before winter sets in. “Essence of winter …show more content…

Frost uses this technique to create a connection between the reader and the apple-picker, since both the reader and the apple-picker are imagining the things being described. In lines 9 through 15, the apple-picker describes a memory of his experience earlier that day at the drinking trough - “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.” He continues his detached remembering in lines 16 through 26 with an explanation of how the apple-picking season has saturated his mind with the sights, sounds, and feelings of apple-picking until he experiences them even when he is not picking apples - “Magnified apples appear and disappear / [...] My instep arch not only keeps the ache, / It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. / [...] And I keep hearing from the cellar bin / The rumbling sound / Of load on load of apples coming in.” He then describes the actual experience of picking apples in lines 30 through 36 - “There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, / Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.” In each instance, the reader imagines the scene alongside the apple-picker, imagining themselves in the apple-picker’s place and aligning with his beliefs. However, as Frost is aiding the reader in identifying with the apple-picker’s experience, he is simultaneously calling into question the reliability of the apple-picker’s opinions. In lines nine through twelve, Frost uses

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