A Close and Critical Study Of the Poetry of Rober Frost

“After Apple Picking” literally deals with the process of a man picking apples before the arrival of the winter season. However the poem may also be symbolically or metaphorically seen as life itself, the picking of apples representing life’s work and acc

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This may include choosing the career that one wishes to follow or a decision about religion or marriage. The apple picker is looking back on his life much like the traveller wishes to do so in the future. The apple picker himself is the representation of a man doing his life’s work. The man reflects on his life, his successes and failures.

In this poem four major symbols have been established. People make decisions such as the literal one made in “The Road Not Taken” everyday. The year or the apple harvest represents the life of a man, the four seasons symbolizing the stages in human life. The ‘…undergrowth…’ is a sign of the fact that what lies ahead is unknown and only by taking that route shall the traveller unveil what the future holds. The traveller is unsure of the future and hopes that in ages and ages when he is an old man he may look back at this decision and know that he took the right path. This confusion about what lies ahead in the after life has been pondered over hundreds of years and Frosts poem allows the responder to generate their own thoughts and conclusions about this extraordinary aspect of life. In Frosts poem this traveller is having difficulty in making a decision about what people today would classify as an ordinary or simple choice to make.

The most important moments in ones life usually involve the necessity to make a fundamental choice about the future. The use of metaphors and symbolism allows the poetry to make this connection for the responder between the ordinary and extraordinary aspects of life. In the poem an individual comes to a fork in the road where a choice about which path shall be travelled by is presented. A sense of non-achievement and regret is on his mind as he falls asleep.

Common topics in this essay:
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Approximate Word count = 1432
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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