Summary of After Apple Picking

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“After Apple-Picking” by Robert Frost is a poem about a man who is picking apples of a tree from climbing an old fashioned ladder for a living. As the days were passing by he is getting older and weaker and the weather is getting worse. Once he is off to work the smell of the apples in the barrels make him drowsy, sleepy, and want to rest for hours. During the day he wonders and thinks about his dream he had about the world melting from a frosty glass sheet. His mind wonders if the dream was real or is it his time to just rest after a tire full day. In the end the speaker wonders if he will sleep through the night like a woodchuck for 3 month period or only as a human, where they have to wake up the next day and go back to work. As the speaker says, “My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree / Toward heaven still”, (Lines 1-2) the poem is portraying the story will be about what happens after picking the apples, while these two lines suggest he is still picking the apples. The first two lines confuse you but that’s what Frost does he likes to add metaphors and various rhyming patterns to help the reader set the tone. As the poem goes on you notice that the speaker is getting exhausted from picking apples all day, “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” (3-5). When he says “there is a barrel he didn’t fill,” means he has been filling a lot of barrels throughout the day and there were still apples that he didn’t fill or pull out of the tree yet. This gives you an idea that the speaker is someone old and does not have much energy to do anymore work. The sixth line says, “But I am done with apple-picking now,” (6) the speaker is finally done for the day and not only done for picking apples but also done with the tedious job. The time period changes to how the weather is

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