I’m going to analyze a long short story “The apple tree” by John Galsworthy, an English

novelist and playwright, one of the most popular writers of the early 20th century. He was born
in Coombe, Surrey in August 14, 1867. John Galsworthy was educated at Harrow and New
College, Oxford.
Although Galsworthy is best known for his novels, he was also a successful playwright.
John Galsworthy was awarded the Order of Merit in 1929 and the Nobel Prize for literature in
1932.
In “The apple tree”, John Galsworthy tells the story of Asherst, a middle-aged man who
once goes to a village with his wife. While being there he remembers that 26 years ago just at
that place, when he was a young man and just graduated from the university, he met a young girl,
Megan by name, whom he fell in love. He promised to marry her and they decided to go away
together. The next day he went to Torquay for money but there Asherst met his old friend, Phil
Halliday by name , who invited him to spend a day with him and his sisters. Then the author
passes on to say that Asherst fell in love with Phil’s sister Stella. The story ends with Asherst’s
desire to look at the farm where Megan lived. There he meets an old man, who tells him that
Megan commited a suicide because of unhappy love.
There is an external type of a conflict in the story. The two parties are Asherst that is
protagonist, and Megan, antagonist. The author describes them combining two methods of
characterization. The main character of the story is Asherst. He is a middle aged married man.
He is well-educated. It’s quite clear that 26 years ago Asherst was inexperienced and young. He
is very romantic as he says that he was always in love with somebody. It is important for him to
have a person to admire and think about. Galsworthy succeded to show different sides of
Asherst’s being. In the beginning of the story, when Asherst first meets Megan, we sympathize
with him. The author managed to make the reader believe it to be real deep love which would
end happily. But in Torquay he behaves as fully another person. He didn’t even want to explain
everything Megan, whom he was supposed to love very much. He just decided to avoid
superfluous problems pretending that he didn’d notice her.
Another main character of the story is Megan. She is a beautiful girl of seventeen years
old. It doesn’t do the readers any difficulty to understand that she is very naïve and romantic
young girl “with a loving heart” as an old man said about her. She doesn’t happen to be
anywhere but in the farm. She is always busy doing all the job on the farm as she is the only
woman there except her aunt. The author tries to make us sympathize with her. He shows that
there isn’t any person on the farm with whom she could have heart-to-heart talk. Every day’s
talks with Asherst make her be deeply attached to him. She is also a very honest and faithful
person because it doesn’t come to her mind that Ahserst’s absence is caused by his unwillingness
to come to her again. She doesn’t believe it because it is not in her nature and she doesn’t think it
to be in somebody else’s nature. Megan is shown as a virgin character who has never loved
before, never been anywhere, never faced with another people. Her commiting a suicide is an
important part of the story. Even if she didn’t do that, she wouldn’t be that Megan that is shown
in the story. She would be completely another person, would lose her naivety and “loving heart”,
because such kinds of incidents totally change a person.
Galsworthy uses third-person objective narration. That means that the narrator doesn’t
participate in the actions but knows everything concerning the characters. I think it to be a very
objective and reliable type of narration because the author can enter the minds of the characters
and the reader is able to know more.
The story is written in simple language. While showing the conversation with the
children or with an old man on the farm, the author writes in dialectal words in order to make the
reader deeply feel the atmosphere of that farm. He also writes that the two friends while going
“haven’t met a soul for miles”. This metaphor is used in order to show that the farm is situated
by itself and people on the farm live exclusive lives. While describing Megan the author also
uses many epithets and metaphors. “Megan’s eyes were the wonder – dewy as if opened for the
first time that day”. Using this stylistic device the author shows Megan’s beauties of nature. Such
epithets as “greyish blouse”, “worn and old”, “split shoes” show her pressure of work. The
language of an extract helps us to understand that the characters that day were all in good mood
as they joke and try to be as friendly as possible.
The syntactical pattern is not very difficult and it doesn’t do any difficulty to follow the
main idea.
The story is devoted to the problem of relationship between people from different social
classes. It is difficult for Asherst to decide to go back to Megan as he understands them to be too
different to live together. It is important for some of us to get on with people from our social
class. There would be too many things on which we would have different points of view. And of
course misunderstanding makes it more difficult to get on with a person.
And also there is another problem in the story. The problem of responsibility of our
words. If we say something, we should do it. Asherst prefers to disguise himself instead of
coming up to Megan and explaining his intentions. We should think in advance whether we
could do something or not. No matter how difficult it is to be responsible for our words. It is
better not to promise than to disappoint a person who believed you.