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Robert FrostA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Metaphor is a comparison between two dissimilar objects or ideas that lacks the terms “like” or “as.” Frost frequently utilized metaphor in his poems. “After Apple-Picking” opens with the image of a “long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree / Toward heaven still” (Lines 1-2). The ladder may be viewed as a metaphor for the climb into the afterlife. If the ladder becomes a metaphor for the upward climb into the afterlife, the “cider-apple heap” deemed “of no worth” (Lines 35-36) is a metaphor for hell.
The “great harvest” (Line 29) desired by the speaker is not a metaphor for the apples the speaker either picked or left unpicked, but for the opportunities in life the speaker chose to pursue. The speaker acknowledges they are “overtired” (Line 28) of the harvest. The harvest becomes a metaphor for the speaker’s unrealized opportunities and desires; “overtired” is a metaphor for the exhaustion caused by worrying about the unrealized opportunities and desires throughout a lifetime.
The process of apple-picking is an extended metaphor for human existence. The speaker asserts “I am done with apple-picking now” (Line 6), meaning they have come to the end of their mortality.
By Robert Frost
Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost
A Time To Talk
Robert Frost
Birches
Robert Frost
Dust of Snow
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Fire and Ice
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Mending Wall
Robert Frost
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
October
Robert Frost
Once by the Pacific
Robert Frost
Out, Out—
Robert Frost
Putting in the Seed
Robert Frost
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Robert Frost
The Death of the Hired Man
Robert Frost
The Gift Outright
Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
West-Running Brook
Robert Frost