lifes works. He believes he held himself up when boughs bend(23) and things may have gotten hard. He sees he made it through life making somewhat reasonable choices. The sounds from the cellar bin is the crying of the unfinished and untouched things in life that are put off until too late. He again admits that he is overtired of the apple picking. His fiend and search for knowledge now has been swept away and overcome by his urge for rest and sleep. The knowledge is as of no worth(36) now. This is again like Adam and Eve, eaing from the tree of knowledge. They too became full and they too wanted the knowledge and choices of life. Once they had it, they no longer wanted it. Finally accepting the choices he has made throughout his lifetime, he is truly concerned of what trouble may arise in his sleep.He wonders if he had ever in fact, made the right decisions and if he really had taken advantage of all open opportunities. He wonders where his sleep will take him, heaven or hell, whatever sleep it is(38).The narrator symbolizes himself repetitvely to the woodchuck. The poem suggests that the speaker is going in and out of sleep, like hibernation. The speaker has Berry 3eaten a lot of food, Of the great harvest I myself desired.(29), like one would in hibernation. Maybe the reader is an animal of some sort whom would be waking up periodically-seeing and experiencing different things. Then, the presence of winter coming on feels like the referring to mortality. The question of about what kind of sleep to expect, suggests some kind of new life;an after life or maybe just as the wood chuck awakes after hibernation. The speaker in this poem is talking in narrative form. Heis a simple, elderly manwho is probably very common. He is strained emotionally from lifes choices and confusions. The narrator is talking to himself, almost as if he were performing a monologue; maybe to God.There are many ...
