After Apple-Picking

1. auditory imagery-the rumbling sound of load on load of apples coming in. Olfactory imagery- essence of winter sleep is on the night, the scent of apples. Kinesthetic imagery- my instep arch not noly keeps the ache, it keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. To me, the imagery in this poem created a feeling of being tired of and bored with the job of apple picking.

2. The speaker in this poem feels that his work isn't that important, and because of this he has done his job poorly (empty barrels and apples on the boughs that weren't picked). He finds the work tedious and isn't happy with its results.

3. I think that the speaker shifts to the present tense because he is experiencing what he thinks he will dream about. Not nessecarily the magnified apples, but the feel of the ladder rungs and the sound of the rumbling apples. The speaker has experienced the apple-picking so much tha he feels he will dream about it.

4. Later on in the poem, the speaker talks of the woodchucks sleep (its hibernation). I think this is what the speaker means when he is talking of sleep. He wants to have that same sleep that the woodchuck does. To be able to go into a dreamless sleep after a lot of hard work and preparation (the harvest). The speaker has an attitude of envy because he wants to be able to go into that long sleep and wake up later when all the hardships are over. He doesn't fear it and in fact looks forward to it. The speaker expects to have a dreamless sleep.

5. a) the ladder- it is two-pointed representing what the speaker wants and what will probably happen to him. b) the season of the year- autum is the season of preparation and stocking for the winter, and the speaker thinks he hasn't gotten anything by working atapple-picking for the harvest. c) the harvesting- the preparation for the long months ahead. Like the woodchuck storing up on food and getting fat to prepare for hibernation. d) the "pane of glass"- a sheet of ice that was on the water trough. Something that distorts the world if you look through it because it isn't perfect.

6. The woodchuck's sleep is different from just some human's sleep because it is long. A woodchuck hibernates and it is a sleep where they aren't haunted by dreams of things that they have done often. If the woodchuck had human sleeps, it would most likely wake up as often as we do from the dreams.

I think this poem is not noly talking about the picking of apples, but about how the narrator feels about life. He feels that if you miss a few things that you were intending to do (the missed apples on the branches) that it is not something you should make a huge deal about. And he also feels that if you life is not as full as you think it should be (the empty apple barrels), that isn't a big problem either. The narrator still feels that you will be tired when the time comes for you to sleep.