Allegory

Literary Device: Allegory

A story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning. Normally with a literal meaning and a interpreted meaning.

Example: The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair, 

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was  grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

Allegory is used in the poem to create the idea that the speaker must make a choice of which path to take. However the two paths that the speaker  can choose to go down obviously represent a decision the speaker has to make during his life and would be very difficult to be interpreted differently.

The Road Not Taken

1) The speaker does not feel that he has made the wrong choice taking the road less traveled. The speaker sighs because he could not take both roads but it thankful that he has taken the one less traveled.

2) The choice between to similar roads will make a difference later on down the line because like in life one path may only be a little different than the other but it opens up into an entirely different journey. 

In the poem the speaker comes to a point in his life where he has the choice to make a decision between two things. One would be the choice that many people before him have made and the other would be taking a small chance and doing the thing that fewer people have done. In the end the speaker does not sigh because he is disappointed about his decision  but more of a sigh that he is happy with his choice. "I-I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference" shows that he has gotten more out of the path less taken.

=/ After Apple-Picking

After Apple-Picking is a poem of a man who has worked long and hard for his whole life and his work is coming to an end either because of winter or the end of his life. The apples he is picking represent what he has accomplished in his life. He mentions barrels he hasn't filled and apples he hasn't picked upon a limb which represents the things in life that he has not done which he doesn't seem to sad about. Then the man grows tired and starts to dream. He dreams of all of the apples he has picked which may represent the things he has done in life. He has worked hard because he mentions the ache in the arch of his foot from the ladder. He hears loads of apples coming in also representing the many things he has done but says he is tired of apple picking or the life he has lived. He mentions tens of thousand of apples or things he could have done that he did not touch that are worthless to him because he did not do them. 

1)The author uses in depth description of both the apples and the trees and smells of them. He mentions his ladder sticking through the trees, the stems, blossoms and the way the limbs bend. He describes where and why his feet hurt form the many years of picking apples. The emotional responses he revokes are the feelings of being in an apple orchard picking apples possibly getting tired and sore from straining on a tall ladder.

2)The speaker doesn't seem to feel like he has done his work poorly or well only that he has accomplished a lot saying that he hears the rumbling sound of load on load of apples but also feels that he did not accomplish many things. He probably once found enjoyable but now he is tired of apple picking as he says he has had too much.

The speaker switches to present tense because his dream or sleep is what is happening to him at the moment. The next event in his life will be what he is talking about in his tired and dreamlike state. The experience in the dream is described much more precisely and covers more of what the speaker has accomplished rather than talking of how tired he is.

4)The speaker thinks of sleep as ether death or the end of his work. He feels that he has picked a huge amount of apples or done many things and is tired and is looking forward to going to sleep.

5)Since the ladder is pointing towards heaven it could represent that he has come to the end of his life and is going to die and possibly go to heaven. The seasons of the year may represent what the man has done. He has picked apples during the time they grow and now that winter is coming his job is done and it is time for him to go to sleep. The harvesting represents the things that the speaker has done during his life and now that he has done so many things, even if he has not done many of the things he could, and that he is done harvesting and is ready to be done.  Pane of Glass? Essence?

The sleep of the woodchuck is that of winter. Woodchucks hibernate when they cannot get anything done and then wake up when the weather is good again.....I need help Fielding

Love Song Of Alfred Prufrock

In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock a man is sitting possibly at home in a room or maybe even out side of a ballroom or a parlor trying to decide whether or not to enter. There are many people inside including most likely many pretty woman which we get from the line, "In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo". He is scared that he might not be able to relate with these woman even though he has been to events like this and talked to the woman before. We know this because he thinks, "And i have known the arms already, known them all..." and that he is scared because he thinks, "Is it perfume from a dress that makes me so digress?". Also something that is keeping him out is that he doesn't really like the society within the place and maybe that he even thinks it is a joke because he says throughout the story that there is always time and much of it. However even though he thinks there is time he is worried about being old and what people might say about him and his skinny legs and thinning hair. At the end of the poem he is still trying to make a decision.