Apples.

You can still go to the forests of southern Kazakhstan (yes, Borat’s Kazakhstan) and pick apples off the wild Malus sieversii trees. Most modern species of cultivated apple, or Malus domestica, can trace their roots (pun intended) back to this wild variety. Today, in our supermarkets and fruitbowls, most apples are either entirely red or entirely green. But the majority of apples on the Malus sieversii trees possess a mottled draping of red and green mixed together. Of course, as symbols and metaphors, apples carry cultural connotations. The most obvious and persistent is that fruit of ‘original sin’ that had Adam and Eve evicted from paradise. The Bible never states that the fruit in question was a red apple, or even that it was an apple at all. Most theologians believe that the ‘fruit of temptation’ was actually a pomegranate, drawing close parallels to the fruit that Persephone was tempted to eat in the underworld of ancient Greek myth. However, with the Latin words for ‘apple’ (“malus”) and ‘evil’ (“malum”) being so similar, it is little surprise that a religious culture jumped on a coincidence, and so we have a history of the red apple gripped firmly in Eve’s hand. The red apple is synonymous with the passions, matters of the equally red heart.

But it is not only red apples that hold symbolic meaning. If red apples have connections to affairs of the heart, green apples represent matters of the mind. Legend says that Isaac Newton sat peacefully under a tree, until a falling apple hit him on the head and he was instantly inspiring with a new understanding of gravity. Of course, this myth of science is just that, a mere myth. Still, when we imagine that apple in our mind’s eye, it is likely a green one. Likewise, the prescribed daily apple we perceive to keep the doctor away is also green. Grey areas start to slip in when we imagine the clichéd apple that we give to a respected teacher; some of us will envision a green apple, some of us red. This ambiguity lies in the fact that the gift is one of both the head and the heart. We could give a green apple because we are student of the mind; a red apple because of our respect and affection for the teacher. However, most of those who imagine giving a red apple to their teacher will also visualise a single green leaf attached to its stem- a symbol of the mind sprouting from the heart, and the reason for any ‘red’ affection in the first place.

Though human cultivation has divided the colours of the original wild apple into distinct reds and greens, we have domesticated a number of species that blend both colours, and therefore both meanings. Consider the Gala Apple, with its evenly distributed speckling of red and green. Even more interesting is the Golden Delicious, where the two colours are blended, resulting in an apple of consistent gold. In Greek mythology, it is a golden apple that Hera, Athena and Aphrodite each assume is a gift for them, a misunderstanding that eventually snowballs into the Trojan War. History may remember it as the ‘Apple of Discord’ but at the time, it was precisely the meaninglessness of the golden fruit and its inscription, ‘Kallisti’ (“for the fairest one”) that led to the mistakes and the bloodshed. In later mythology, when William Tell is forced to fire a crossbow at an apple sitting atop his son’s head, he successfully splits the fruit in half. It is fitting that we imagine Tell’s apple as a golden one, made of contradictory colours to depict an event simultaneously heroic and tragic. Being forced to aim a weapon at his offspring would have broken Tell’s heart as much as it tested his mind. A golden apple holds no inherent meaning because both its colours cancel each other out.

At the core, we see that it is only possible to extract meaning from the symbolic apple once we dissect the two distinct colours from the fruit’s golden potential. Seen separately, with the red of the heart or the green of the mind, we know that an apple represents either passion or knowledge. All together, like Eden’s “tree of knowledge of good and evil”, we know that apples themselves mythological prove that ignorance isn’t bliss after all.

/mr_metaphor.