Consider the poems. "The Corn Harvest" by William Carlos Williams An excerpt from "After Apple Picking" by Robert Frost Summer !
the painting is organized about a young reaper enjoying his noonday rest completely relaxed from his morning labors sprawled in fact sleeping unbuttoned on his back the women have brought him his lunch perhaps a spot of wine they gather gossiping under a tree whose shade carelessly he does not share the resting center of their workaday world. My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Toward heaven still. And there's a barrel that I didn't fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples; I am drowsing off. I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight I got from looking through a pane of glass I skimmed this morning from the water-trough, And held against the world of hoary grass. It melted, and I let it fall and break. But I was well Upon my way to sleep before it fell, And I could tell What form my dreaming was about to take. Magnified apples appear and reappear, Stem end and blossom end, And every fleck of russet showing clear. How is Frost’s presentation of the subject different than Williams’s? Williams is complimentary toward the workers, but Frost is critical. Williams’s characters are eager to return to work, but Frost’s are not. Williams explains the challenges of the harvest, but Frost only mentions the fruit. Williams speaks as an observer, but Frost speaks as a participant in the harvest.
The answer is: Williams speaks as an observer, but Frost speaks as a participant in the harvest.
In the poem "The Corn Harvest," Williams writes in the third person, which implies he is a spectator of the scene he describes. However, in the excerpt from "After Apple Picking," Frost uses the first person point of view, so it is the narrator who has taken part in the apple-picking.
