Between “Seeming” and “Being”: Robert Frost’s writing of Man’s Existential Dilemma in “After Apple-Picking”

Abstract

Having received four times of Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Robert Frost is regarded as a legendary figure and has become an icon not only in his own lifetime but also in the whole American literary history, and he is “an almost granite-like figure worthy of a place on Rushmore or a similar pantheon of poets” [1]. His poetry, most of which is against the backdrop of the landscape of tranquil New England, though “deceptively simple”, embraces a profound regional hue and is deep in both literal and connotative meanings. He is a man who uses his own language to depict what real life is like and tells people what they should do when they are confronted with big moments in life.