Human Nature and Death
Taking the Forbidden Fruit from the serpent
In After Apple-Picking, Frost tells us of a man who has spent his life picking apples. After reading the poem several times, we can start to understand what apple-picking really means: it’s a symbol of the actions which earn one’s way to heaven. In lines one and two, it’s important to note that the ladder that the man is using is “sticking through a tree/Toward heaven still.” The use of the word “toward” tells us that it is indeed a journey, one which requires work. This sheds a rather sobering light onto the significance of the sixth line: “But I am done with apple-picking now.” The speaker has given up on apple-picking–given up on heaven. (Knowing that he will die soon, this is pretty depressing–who wants to spend their last days having given up on salvation?) Interestingly enough, later on, the speaker tells us, “And I keep hearing from the cellar bin/The rumbling sound/Of load on load of apples coming in.” (24-26). If we assume that the “cellar bin” is hell, then what does “apple-picking” really mean? In the next lines, this is made clear. Frost writes, “For I have had too much/Of apple-picking: I am overtired/Of the great harvest I myself desired.” Suddenly, we have an entirely new outlook on apple picking: it is a symbol of the actions which earn one’s way to hell. Here, the allusion to the Tree of Forbidden Fruit is evident in Frost’s symbolic statement about this man: that the latter has fallen prey to some sort of “serpent”–he has given into greed. This comparison to Adam and Eve’s story makes the tone of the poem (a casually accepting attitude) incredibly significant. Undoubtedly, the nonchalance with which the speaker gives in to his fate is disturbing.
“ One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
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. ” (37-42)
By John William Waterhouse
As I mentioned in my initial blog post, Frost forces us to think about death in a new way: is it eternal? Growing up as a Christian, my mind rarely heads for reincarnation, but it is the first idea that I had here. It seems that, to the speaker, a “long sleep” is like woodchuck’s hibernation–only in this case it seems that the reader will never wake up. A “human sleep” is the speaker’s name for a period of time between life and…something else. Whether this is another life or something entirely different I’m not sure, but I do think we can say that he means that death is not “forever.” That is, if death is in fact a “human sleep,” at some point we will wake up.
But back to casual attitudes towards death. Frost wrote another poem called Home Burial which includes a rather similar element. The entire poem is a conversation between father and mother about the death of their son. (It’s never specified whether the two are husband and wife. Regardless, throughout this section I may refer to the father as “the man” and the mother as “the woman.”) Initially, the woman seems bothered by something which the man can’t figure out. After a moment’s thought, the latter discovers what is troubling her: the grave of their child. As she begins to leave, he begins a long speech about how they might get along better. The end is the important part. He tells the woman,
“ I do think, though, you overdo it a little.
What was it brought you up to think it the thing
To take your mother-loss of a first child
So inconsolably–in the face of love.
You’d think his memory might be satisfied– ” (65-69),
to which she responds, “There you go sneering now!” (70). Earlier, he asks her “Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?” (37). These three parts show us how the man views death. While his tone is not as accepting or casual as the speaker in After Apple-Picking, it’s still a rather disturbing attitude in my opinion. One of two things seems possible to me. On one hand, the man’s attitude may be a coping mechanism, a means by which he deals with his son’s death. On the other, he may simply be what some would call “hard.” This latter conclusion seems pretty likely given the end of the poem, where he tells the woman, “I’ll follow and bring you back by force.” (120). Personally, however, I’d like to think that the former is the actual case. Later in their conversation, the man says, “I shall laugh the worst laugh I ever laughed./I’m cursed. God, if I don’t believe I’m cursed.” (93-94). If he’s not in a state of complete emotional distress, at the very least, he must be deranged.
