Tree full of Goals
To me it seems like the apples in the poem, After Apple Picking, seem to represent the writers goals. the 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." This shows that he was trying to achieve as many goals as he could but didn't achieve everything he wanted to and left his goals still hanging on the tree. Also, in the poem it says that "For all / That struck the earth, / No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, / Went surely to the cider-apple heap / As of not worth" I take these fallen apples as being either goals that he tried and failed or goals that he once had but no longer had a desire to achieve.
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Nikita McClellan on Tree full of Goals: Your blog makes me have more i
Matt Henderson on Tree full of Goals: This is an interesting passage
Carlos Peredo on Tree full of Goals: I really liked how the narrato
Matt Henderson on Tree full of Goals: This is an interesting passage
Carlos Peredo on Tree full of Goals: I really liked how the narrato
I really liked how the narrator didn't make any excuses for himself. "No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble" really says to me that he feels bad that he didn't reach these goals and that he has no excuse for it.
He didn't drop the apple and say "oh well, it had stubble on it" or "meh, it was bruised anyways." No, the narrator is just as upset with himself and isn't going to make any excuses for his shortcomings. Kudos to him...
This is an interesting passage, and now that I'm looking at it again, it's raising a lot of questions for me. Why are all the fallen apples going to the cider-apple heap if they weren't bruised by the fall? Couldn't he just pick them up off the ground if they're still good? And what's wrong with them going off to the cider-apple heap anyway? Why does he call the apples that are being made into cider "of no worth"? Apple cider can provide nourishment too. Of course I'm looking at it purely from a literal standpoint, but I think metaphors should still have a sense of logic. I don't really have good answers to these questions yet, although it may make some sense if you notice that he talks about these apples right after he says "And I could tell/What form my dreaming was about to take." Perhaps he's dreaming about apple-picking, and in his dream-logic the apples do stand for goals or plans that fell by the wayside. That would account for the fact that there are "ten thousand thousand" of them and the idea that once they have fallen to the ground they are worthless.
Your blog makes me have more insight into this poem. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what the poem was talking about. I thought that maybe the guy had fallen into a dream because it kept talking about sleep. "Essense of winter sleep is on the night" and "This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is" where just some of the lines. I believe that your interpetation make a lot of sense and it is interesting to see a dofferent point of view.