Sound & Sense 4

     As we prepare to go to sleep, the prior events of the day, or possibly the thoughts in preparation for tomorrow, may hopelessly preoccupy our brains. The speaker in Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" constantly has thoughts of apples coursing through his mind. Even as he is about to go to sleep, "[he] cannot rub the strangeness from [his] sight." "Magnified apples appear and disappear,/ Stem end and blossom end,/ And every fleck of russet showing clear." In his dreams, the speaker is able to see all sides of the apples, both the 'stem' and the 'end.' A metaphorical comparison can be drawn between the speaker's life and the apples. When the speaker's days are finally coming to an end: "[The] essence of winter sleep is on the night," thoughts of apples still flood his mind. He is thinking about both the positive and negative aspects of his work and life. The speaker of this poem seems to believe that he is in his final days. Subtly throughout the poem he includes lines such as, "Toward heaven still" and "I am overtired/ Of the great harvest myself desired." The speaker has lived a long, dutiful life that revolved around picking apples, and it is now coming to an end. The last lines of the poem emphasize the idea that his death is nearing: "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 speaker inverts the syntax of the first two lines. Instead of saying "The woodchuck could say whether it's like his were he not gone,"  the speaker inverses the order of the sentence through the use of anastrophe. This inversion places emphasis on the word "gone," which is used as a euphemism for death. The speaker knows that his winter sleep is coming, but he is uncertain if it will closer resemble peaceful hibernation or a dreary death. "After Apple-Picking" is a poem that recognizes how when we are close to our final days, we realize how our thoughts are consumed by the activities that dominated our lives, but not necessarily the activities that were most meaningful or fulfilling.