North of Boston · Chapter
After Apple-Picking explained
A weary apple picker reflects on the end of the harvest, the physical exhaustion of the work, and the strange, dreamlike state between waking and sleeping.
What happens
A weary apple picker reflects on the end of the harvest, the physical exhaustion of the work, and the strange, dreamlike state between waking and sleeping. The speaker describes the lingering sensations of the labor—the ache in his instep, the sway of the ladder, the rumbling of apples in the cellar—and anticipates a troubled sleep filled with images of apples, questioning whether it will be a deep, deathlike sleep or merely human rest.
Themes in this chapter
Work and Labor
The poem centers on the physical and mental exhaustion of apple picking, emphasizing the repetitive, demanding nature of the harvest and the speaker's desire for rest.
Death and Mortality
The speaker's contemplation of sleep as a 'long sleep' akin to the woodchuck's hibernation suggests a meditation on death and the boundary between life and the afterlife.
Nature and the Land
The imagery of apples, the ladder, the drinking trough, and the hoary grass grounds the poem in the natural world, with the harvest serving as a backdrop for the speaker's introspection.
Characters to notice
- Unknown Narrator
The speaker of the poem, an apple picker who is overtired and drifting into a dreamlike sleep after the harvest.
Key passages
“My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree / Toward heaven still”
My tall ladder is still propped against the tree, pointing upward toward the sky.
The ladder's position suggests unfinished work but also a symbolic reach toward the divine or transcendent.
“For I have had too much / Of apple-picking: I am overtired / Of the great harvest I myself desired.”
I've had more than enough of apple picking; I'm exhausted from the very harvest I once wanted.
The speaker reflects on the irony of desiring the harvest and now feeling overwhelmed by it.
“One can see what will trouble / This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.”
It's clear what will disturb my sleep, no matter what kind of sleep it turns out to be.
The speaker anticipates that the memories and sensations of apple picking will haunt his rest.
“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.”
If the woodchuck were still here, he could tell me if this sleep is like his hibernation or just ordinary human sleep.
The speaker muses on the nature of his sleep, comparing it to the woodchuck's seasonal hibernation, which symbolizes death.