Images of Apple Picking
Images of Apple PickingImages of Apple Picking
Dr. Hofer
�After Apple Picking� is fraught with imagery. Frost uses visual, olfactory, kinesthetic, tactile, and auditory imagery throughout this piece. Because the poem is filled with a variety of images, the reader is able to imagine the experience of apple picking.
Frost brings He begins with �My long two-pointed ladder�s sticking through a tree� (line 1). This line gives the reader a visual concept of a long pointed ladder nestled in an apple tree. And, allows the reader to expand that image to a multitude of apple pickers with their pointy ladders alongside him in neighboring trees. Frost continues with the visual images with following lines:
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. (Lines 3-5)
Because of these lines, the reader envisions an apple picker on his ladder high up in the tree fling as many barrels as he can, but still not filling them all. In addition, to the visual images, Frost then moves on to olfactory imagery.
In one very simple line, � The scent of apples: I am drowsing off� line 8, Frost gives the reader an opportunity to smell apples. As he does not specify the type of apples being picked it is left to the reader�s imagination as to what type of apples he or smells.
From olfactory, the author moves on to tactile paired with visual imagery as seen in lines 11-13:
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
Through these words, the reader can envision the man skimming a thin piece of ice (pane of glass) from the drinking trough. He looks through the ice at the frosted grass. The reader can also experience the feeling of cold on his hands from picking up and holding the piece of ice. And feel it break in his hands as it melts from the heat from his hands.
Frost quickly moves back to visual imagery found in lines 18-20 with phrases such as �Magnified apples�, Stem end� �Blossom end�, and �fleck of russet�. Again, the vision of all types of apples, in not only color, but also the image is slightly distorted now...
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