Finding happiness in
everyday life is something the whole world aspires to do. In order to find happiness though, they need
to focus on a career that makes them happy, and not something with a tangible
reward. Robert Frost describes what can
happen if people choose a career that does not satisfy them in his poem, “After
Apple-Picking.” Frost portrays his
feelings of despair as he realizes that he chose a monetary value over his own
happiness by using literary elements such as personification and imagery.
The speaker’s life is full of regret at his decision to
pick apples for a living because of the physical benefits. Because of the choice the speaker made he is
haunted by the very thing he thought he desired night after night. Frost states, “The woodchuck could say
whether it’s like his/Long sleep, as I describe its coming on/Or just some
human sleep.” This gives us the image of
having a nightmare that you cannot wake up from. A dream that haunts you even after you wake
and makes life a difficult task in of itself.
In order to fully understand Frost’s message, the reader must imagine
sleeping for months with the same terrible dream of something that they used to
love, but has become so redundant in their life that then can no longer stand
the sight of it. This is the message
that Frost achieves through the use of personification. Although this is a great message, it would
not be as well understood without Frost’s use of imagery.
“After Apple-Picking” uses many forms of imagery to
convey the overall message to do what makes you happy. Imagery is the use of descriptive language in
a literary work. Frost uses this
figurative language throughout his poem to give it a sense of familiarity. A great example would be when Frost says, “I
cannot rub the strangeness from my sight/I got from looking through a pane of
glass.” This describes the trouble that
individuals might have seeing their mistakes until it is already too late. When the speaker is looking through “the pane
of glass,” he cannot process his thoughts clearly and believes the world is
different than what is actually there.
Once the glass melts, reality sets in and he realizes the mistake he
made when he took this job. This applies
to real life because every human being in this world makes mistakes, and most
times, they do not realize they have made them until it is too late to fix
them. Frost uses imagery to further the
dramatization of his message.
The feelings of sadness and hopelessness are evident
throughout Frost’s poem and are further dramatized by his use of literary
elements. It is important to understand
the message that Frost conveys because doing what makes a person happy is the
most important thing in one’s life. A
person cannot be truly happy making a ton of money at a job that they
hate. To make myself happy, I will
become a microbiological researcher because I can make a difference in the
world by curing terrible diseases that affect everyday people. The world needs more people interested in
finding the causes of life threatening diseases and I would love to take on
that challenge. Money is a very
important aspect of everyday life, but it should never rule a person’s life.
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