A recurring motif in the novel, apples have long been associated with the Garden of Eden and relate to the novel’s theme of Paradise Lost. The fruit first appears as a source of temptation when one of the Puritan scouts offers a slice to the captive girl. She’s quick to understand the allusion. “And I laughd, and said, Who am I, Eve?” (16). A seed from that same apple, within a buried scout’s rotting corpse, later germinates into the first tree bearing the Osgood Wonder apple. The apple in question may symbolize paradise but fails to offer anything positive to either the scout or the girl.

Osgood’s lifelong obsession with apples begins when he’s bayonetted by a French soldier. The soldier was coring an apple at the time, and the fruit was skewered by his bayonet, preventing the weapon from fully penetrating Osgood’s body. Again, the apple holds a seductive promise. Osgood interprets it as the hand of providence at work to spare his life. Later, the Osgood Wonder apple becomes Alice’s undoing after a neighbor uses the fruit to make hard cider and, when she becomes tipsy, seduces her. Unlike the captive girl, Alice is tempted by the apple, and she pays for this indiscretion with her life when Mary kills her.