"After Apple-Picking" by: Robert Frost

While reading this poem, I saw the whole poem as being symbolic of the speaker's life. In the third and fourth lines, I saw "two or three Apples (he) didn't pick," as being roads he never travelled or chances he never took. Although the speaker knows he has not experienced everything he is "done apple-picking" because he is tired. The speaker had worked so hard at life (apple-picking) and he is ready to die. I think that the "ladder...toward heaven" is symbolic of his good deeds that have gotten him closer to heaven. Sometimes, he "the ladder sway" and these are symbolic of his bad experiences and decisions in life that almost caused everything to be ruined. I feel that there may be a common theme throughout the many poems in this chapter. "Spring," "The Widow's Lament in Spring," "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain," "After Apple-Picking," and "Those Winter Sundays" all seemed to incorporate some kind of sadness or longing for death. They all seemed dark to me, including some kind of evil in life.