Much has been written about the futility of life and humankind’s involvement in the natural world. “After Apple-Picking” depicts an orchard: a place where life, death, and seasons merge. During Frost’s time, orchards were a common scene in rural New England. In Lines 3-5, this futility is initially subtle: “And there’s a barrel that I didn’t feel […] Beside it, and there may be two or three / Apples I didn’t pick upon some bought.” Frost uses nature in this poem to represent life at its harshest, and he relies on taste, sight, and touch to grasp not only the futility of humankind, but also the awareness of individual futility.

The line “[e]ssence of winter sleep is on the night” (Line 7) acts as a shifting point into the poem’s darker, colder elements. The speaker depicts looking through a frosted window, and their vision is skewed by the frost, representing a lack of clarity. From this line forward, Lines 15-17 center on sleeping and the speaker’s inability to fall asleep: “Upon my way to sleep before it fell, / And I could tell / What form my dreaming was about to take.