论弗罗斯特《摘苹果之后》中的死亡隐喻

论弗罗斯特《摘苹果之后》中的死亡隐喻

刘沛婷

湖南师范大学，湖南 长沙 410006

摘要：乔治·莱考夫和马克•约翰逊于《我们赖以生存的隐喻》一书中指出隐喻不仅仅是一种修辞手法，更是一种思维方式，在人们的日常语言和活动中无所不在。诗歌是高度隐喻化的体裁，本文就将以弗罗斯特的短诗——《摘苹果之后》为例，通过挖掘诗歌中的结构隐喻、方位隐喻和本体隐喻，深刻剖析弗罗斯特的死亡观建构，为该诗的解读提供新的维度，也有助于丰富该理论的应用范畴。

关键词:《摘苹果之后》；结构隐喻；方位隐喻；本体隐喻；死亡

On death metaphors in Frost’s“After Apple-Picking”

Peiting Liu

Hunan Normal University, Hunan Changsha 410006

Abstract:George Lakoff andMark Johnson put forward in their book Metaphors We Live By that metaphor is not only a figure of speech but a way of thinking, pervasive ineveryday language and action. Since poetry is highly metaphorical, this thesis is to explore how Robert Lee Frost construct his insight of death through structural metaphors, orientational metaphors as well as ontological metaphors in his short poem “After Apple-Picking”, with the hope to provide a new dimension for the interpretation of the poem and to expand the application scope of the theory.

Key words:“After Apple-Picking”;structural metaphors; orientational metaphors; ontological metaphors; death

1. Introduction

Lakoff and Johnsonin their monograph Metaphors We Live Вy, point out that metaphor not only can be understood from the figurative perspective, but is the thinking way.[1]Ungerer and Schmid hold that conceptual metaphor, as a cognitive instrument, is not just a stylistically dramatic way of expressing thoughts by means of literary language, but a way of thinking.[2]Kövecses has put that conceptual metaphor is defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain.[3] On the basis of the cognitive approach to the understanding of conceptual metaphor, it can be pided into structural metaphor, orientational metaphor and ontological metaphor. The development of conceptual metaphor theory has brought advance to Linguistics, Anthology, Literature and so on.

Robert Lee Frost commands an important place in any list of outstanding poets in the twentieth century. His poem “After Apple-picking” is written in the first person. The speaker is an orchard worker who has picked apples long and hard but is now on the verge of being overwhelmed by fatigue and the depth of the experience. On the edge of falling sleep, he remembers not only the ripe apples successfully picked but also those that fell and were considered damaged and had to be sent to the cider mill. He knows that his sleep will be troubled by the failures more than by the successes. He is not sure about the nature of the sleep he is about to drop into—whether it will be ordinary sleep, more like a hibernation, or more like death.The entire poem is a kind of extended metaphor, in which the activity of harvesting apples represents people’ life and the speaker’s falling asleep suggests human death.

As a classical literary work, the study of this poem mostly focuses on its rhythm and writing devices. The analysis of multiple themes and symbols has always been the research hotspot of literature works.Li Yingxue discussedthe fuzziness of the meaning of poetry from the perspective of deconstruction, and there are many scholars who explore metaphors in Frost’s other poems.[4]Few people applied it to analyze “After Apple-Picking”. Therefore, this paper is to discuss how Frost structureshis thoughts on death metaphorically by describing a laborer’s picking apples. The first three chapters of this thesis illustrate Frost’s views of death through the construction of structural metaphors, orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors in “After Apple-Picking” respectively. At last it is followed by a logical conclusion of this thesis.

2. Structural Metaphors

In structural metaphor, one greatly structured and explicitly delineated concept is applied to structure another. As Lakoff and Johnson point out that one domain of conceptual metaphor is metaphorically structured in light of another. Structural metaphor allows its source domain to offer a comparatively rich knowledge structure for the target domain, that is to say, the cognitive function of structural metaphor is to enable audiences to understand the target domain by the structure of the source domain. The poem “After Apple-Picking” include two key conceptual metaphors: DEATH IS SLEEP and PEOPLE ARE PLANTS.

2.1 DEATH IS SLEEP

Frost chooses a laborer who is overtired with apple-picking and falls asleep to reflect his insight of death.Hence the poem can be understood as a mappingfrom a source domain (sleep) to a target domain (death).The mapping is tightly structured. There are ontological correspondences. The dead correspond to those who have a sound sleep. The retrospection before death corresponds to the unconscious state near sleep. The darkness corresponds to the night. The cease of life corresponds to the stillness and motionlessness of sleep.

As Lakoff puts it, “people use a concrete source domain to describe an abstract target domain.”[5]Death is an abstract concept, which can be understood vividly through the concept of sleep. The word “sleep” has been repeated five times. “Winter sleep” suggests the emotion of being decayed, forlorn and silent triggered by death because winter, in the metaphoric meanings, has strong associations with death.[6]Another euphemistic expression of death is “long sleep”, which is indicative of its permanence. “Human sleep” is the most evident reflection of conceptualization of death as sleep, showing that human death is what Frost has discussed. In the light of sleep, Frost’s “After Apple-Picking” is no longer a lyrical poem of a worker’s experience on the orchard farm and fatigue after a day’s labor, but a profound thought on life and death through an extended conceptual metaphor of death as sleep.

2.2 PEOPLE ARE PLANTS

Both man and tree are living beings thatgo through birth and wither, and the achievements of man are kin to the fruits of plants. “Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough” correspond to those unfilled dreams while apples that “struck the earth/ No matter if not bruised or spilled with stubble” correspond to people’s failed pursuits. The scent of apples refers to delight and satisfaction brought by success. In Frost’s poem, the act of apple-picking is a metaphor for the fruits the speaker has achieved in life.[7]It is universally acknowledged that success is what people desire and is something enjoyable. However, the speaker is overtired of the great harvest and wished to rest, which illustrates that the speakerhas been bored with worldly sense of accomplishment and hopes to simple have a dream and a “long sleep”. Due to the sweet smell of the apple, the narrator actually falls asleep after fatigue and he enters into “long sleep”(death) with a sense of emptiness resulted from the excessive fruits he has gathered. The speaker’s experience reveals the poet’s meditation on life that it is futile people achieve a great deal of success but eventually own nothing after death. Therefore, the poet don’t ponder on human sleep for no reason but

he penetrates the meaninglessness of long tough life struggles.

The two root metaphors are carefully chosen to reflect Frost’s philosophy on death. This also confirms the cognitive value of metaphor, that is, vehicles(such assleep) are usually well known to readers, and their features and structures will be mapped to relatively unfamiliar things when they interact with tenor (such as death) to help readers understand the characteristics and structures of ontology. The characteristics of sleep are mapped to the characteristics of death. Frost’ poem “After Apple-Picking” is not only a pastoral work of rural world in orchard farm but also a thought-provoking poem on death. The end of labor leaves the speaker with a sense of completion and fulfillment yet finds him blocked from success by winter’s approach and physical weariness. The futility that what people achieved as a result resembles fallen apples of no worth leads to fatigue and wish to seek relief in sleep, that is death. Therefore, this seemingly idyllic poem is in fact the ultimate exploration of human destiny through the metaphors of death as sleep and people as plants.

3. Orientational Metaphors

Orientational metaphors do not structure one concept in terms of another but instead organize a whole system of concepts with respect to one another.[1] Most of them have to do with spatial orientation: up-down, in-out, front-back, on-off, deep-shallow, central-peripheral. These spatial orientations arise from the fact that we have bodies of the sort we have and that they function as they do in our physical environment. As Lakoffpoints out that CONSCIOUS IS UP; UNCONSCIOUS IS DOWN. HEALTH SND LIFE ARE UP; SICKNESS AND DEATH ARE DOWN.

This poem employs spatial antagonism to construct death metaphor. “The Apple-Picking” involves a development from consciousness to unconsciousness. At the very beginning, the farmer is sober enough on the long two-pointed ladder sticking toward heaven. The spacial position is rather high. After the speaker has been done with apple-picking, rest is badly needed

after the arduous labour. He is drowsed off and no longer in his conscious state. Frost adopts simple past tense from line8 to line17, serving as a beginning of the speaker’s dream. In the half unconsciousness of the farmer, the autumn evening bursting with the aroma ofthe apples has for a moment changed into a winter morning with hoary glass. In farmer’s dream, things “melted”, “fall and break”, which suggests a downward trend. Finally both woodchuck and the farmer fall asleep on the ground. The perspective of the whole poem shifts from heaven to earth, that is from top to bottom, revealingthe opposition of space. A pane of glass pides the world into two parts: reality and dream. The transition from reality to dream is the manifestation of change of the speaker’s consciousness. The higher position represents reality and consciousness while the lower dream and unconsciousness

What’s more,the positional contrast reveals the opposition of life and death. In the first line of “After Apple-Picking”, the ladder occupies a central position in the whole picture of the poem, acting as a bridge between heaven and earth, life and death. The imagery of heaven and apples evokes the garden of Eden. The act of ascending the ladder symbolized a re-approach to heaven and eternal life while the movement down the ladder symbolizes the descent from heaven to earth, also from life to death[4]. According to Bible, picking apples is considered as corruption and degradation. As baskets of apples fall down and are spiked, they become worthless. This is true of human beings. After the farmer has finished apple-picking, fatigue and emptiness has wrapped him. His vigorous life reaches a pause, which actually means the farmer’s death.

Most of fundamental concepts are organized in terms of one or more spatialization metaphors. In Frost’s “After Apple-Picking”, the poet shows the transition from consciousness to unconsciousness as well as from life to death in virtue of the binary opposition of space. The physical basis of such pision is that humans sleep and die lying down and stand up when they are awaken. Therefore, the antagonism of life and death is constructed through the opposition of up and down positions, which contributes to the further construction of the root metaphors.

4. Ontological Metaphors

Ontological metaphor helps us understand those abstract entities through conceptualizing them as these entities and substances which are related to human’s experience. As Lakoff and Johnson point out:“our experience of physical objects and substances provides a further basis for understanding.” Ontological metaphor could be classified into three types, which are entity and substance metaphor, container metaphor and personification.

Firstly, an invisible abstract concept, in entity and substance metaphor, is considered as a visible concrete object. Human being expresses abstract concepts as these entities and substances which are related to human’s experience. Death is an abstract concept, which can be understood thanks to another common concept—sleep. The dark and bleak state of death is implied by night in winter.The poet also tries to clarify the hibernation of hamsters and the long sleep of human beings: one is short seasonal restand the other is an eternal stop of motion. In this way, the characteristics of death are no longer vague. The first root metaphor of death as sleep receives deeper and more detailed illustrations. Similarly, human achievements becomes a measurable entity like apples in “ After Apple-Picking”. Through these well-known common things, the original abstract concept can be elucidated. The essence of metaphor lies in the comparison between two entities.

Secondly, container metaphor is a kind of ontological metaphor in which an invisible abstract concept is regarded as a container which has a surface owning scope and range with an in-out orientation. In Frost’s poem, the farmer’s dream and sleep is a container, where he can see “magnified apples”, feel “the pressure of ladder-round”. The farmer’s falling into dreams shows the motion from one space to another space. The state of farmer can be classified into “in sleep” and “out of sleep”, which symbolize death and life respectively.

Lastly, personification specifies the physical object as being a man, which can make people to comprehend these different physical objects in light of human characteristics, motivations

and activities.In Frost’s poem, apple “struck the earth” and long sleep can “come on” are all personification. They are extensions of ontological metaphors and that they allow us to make sense of phenomena in the world on the basis of our own goals. It is carefully chosen to endow this poem a dynamic effect so that the theme of this poem can be effectively conveyed.

All in all, the understanding of a poetic metaphor is a cognitive process.[8] Ontological metaphor makes us understand abstract concepts by use of concrete concepts.The poet uses sleep to explain death, making the abstract conceptsimplified and concrete.In the poem, the dream not only reflects the structural metaphor, but also reflects the container metaphor. It forms a contrast between “in dream” and “out of dream” so as to further strengthen the difference between life and death.Apple has bruises, and Death actively does come in.These anthropomorphic expressions embody the metaphorical nature of language and the symbolic nature of death. As a result, metaphor of death in this poem has been justified.

5. Conclusion

The exploration of the relationship between Frost’s view of death and Lakoff’s cognitive metaphors will undoubtedly help readers to guard against deceptive surface meanings when interpreting and appreciating Frost’s poems, and to explore the profound life philosophy reflected in his poems through metaphorical thinking and active participation.

Through piding metaphors in Frost’s “After Apple-Picking” according to Lakoff’s classification, the way of constructing poem’s theme is evidently revealed. At the first glance, it seems to be a lyrical poem, but it actually a poem of death after further analysis. Frost implicitly depicts life actions as apple picking activities, apples are symbols of human achievements, and death is similar to long sleep, which are structural metaphors, through which the characteristics of  abstract concept death can be easily understood. Moreover, the orientational metaphors constitute to the body of this poem. The up-down spatial position pides the farmer

’s state into consciousness and unconsciousness, also a reflection of human’s state of life and death. The contrast between in-out categories reflects the whole poem’s structure: it shifts from reality to dream. Since the farmer’s dream is explained as a container, the state of dreaming metaphorically stands for death. Therefore the whole poem is based on structural metaphors of death is sleep and people are plants, which are illustrated with orientational metaphors and ontological metaphors. 

However, the thesis still has some limitations due to the author’s slim analysis. It can be better with more logical illustrations and evidences. But it is no doubt that the thesis provides a new perspective of discussing Frost’s poem. It expands the application scope of Lakoff’s conceptual metaphor and enriches its practice, and produces referential meaning to literature appreciation.

References

[1]Lakoff, G & M. Johnson. Metaphors We Live By[M]. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.1980.

[2]Ungerer, F & H. J. Schmid. An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics.[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. 2008. 

[3]Kövecses, Z. Metaphor: A practical introduction[M]. New York: Oxford University Press.2002.

[4]李应雪. 一个解构批评的范本——析罗伯特·弗洛斯特诗歌《摘苹果之后》意义的模糊性[J]. 宁夏大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2007(04): 78-81.

[5]Lakoff, G. The Invariance Hypothesis: is abstract reason based on image-schemas?[J]. Cognitive Linguistics, 1990(01): 39-47.

[6]Huo, Lirong. Comments on “After Apple-Picking”[J]. Overseas English, 2012(01): 196-197.

[7]赵志宇. 罗伯特·弗洛斯特的《摘罢苹果》[J]. 文学语言学研究, 2007(02):70-71.

[8]胡壮麟. 诗性隐喻[J]. 山东外语教学, 2001(03): 3-8.

作者简介: 刘沛婷，湖南湘潭人，硕士