The speaker then describes that his exhaustion has overwhelmed him and he is unclear as to whether he will simply fall asleep like any normal person or if he will perish. He then states his confusion to what he believes "long sleep, as I describe its coming on, or just some human sleep" (Frost 41-42).
Robert Frost is able to use the narrator's accounting of apple-picking to symbolize the sin with which humanity is cursed. Within the poem, Frost introduces heaven in the first two lines which gives the reader information behind the use of apples as the premise of this work. Within the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, Adam and Eve are tricked into eating an apple from the tree of forbidden fruit thus falling from the grace of God. The speaker is described to live "in a fallen world where he has labored and sweated. But he gains no sure knowledge as Adam did. His ladder is pointed toward heaven only, and he has had to descend from it. Man can climb the ladder toward heaven, toward certainty, but when he returns, he discovers how little he has learned with certainty" (Conder). The narrator does not reap the benefits of Adam's knowledge and believes his job has little significance in the grand scheme of life, he does not feel important thus creating his desire for death. In the poem the narrator regards the fallen apples as "of no worth" however sympathy seems to be shown when he states that they do possess some worth in the "cider-apple heap" (Frost 35). With this idea the reader gets an idea of the narrator's background and the creativity he possesses with his comparison between his religious beliefs and the harvest.
The harvest itself represents the liveliness of humankind and the winter represents the disappearance of this resourcefulness through either old age or death. The harvest depicts life at its fullest where it is producing fruit and the narrator feels as though he is climbing steps to heaven as he plucks the fruit from the tree.