Critical Response to Robert Frost's "After-apple Picking

Robert Frost: After-Apple Picking

In Robert Frost’s poem, “After-Apple Picking,” Frost takes an ordinary experience and transforms it into a meditative moment, a philosophical musing. Apple-picking slides gradually away from merely harvesting fruit, to considering how life has been experienced fully but with some regrets and mistakes. The reference to winter coming on, feels like the presence of mortality. The question about what kind of sleep to anticipate suggests untroubled oblivion or possibly some kind of new life on its way.
Frost uses a lot of imagery words to fully describe or enhance his work. The significance of the “apple” in this poem, to me, is almost a parallel to the apple in the bible, present in the story of Adam and Eve. It essen...