Summary Of The Red Wheelbarrow

Improved Essays
In the poem “The Red Wheelbarrow”, William Carlos Williams uses both imagery and word order to create a picture in his reader’s minds. The first initial picture that is formed, in my opinion, is of a farm setting; readers can visualize a red wheelbarrow, wet, with white chickens around it. However, if we take a closer look at the words, we are be able to see a much more elaborate representation than just an ordinary farm scene. Williams’s placement of particular words, in this poem, is just as important as the words are themselves (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012).

An example of Williams’s word placement can be seen in the first line; it states “so much depends…” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012, p. 563). This opens the poem up for interpretation and when speaking about a typical wheelbarrow, there would not be much depending on it. However, if we interoperate that the wheelbarrow is symbol, then much can depend on it. Williams goes on to say that the wheelbarrow is “glazed” with rainwater; glazed, in my opinion, creates the image of shiny. When red and glazed are put together, the image could be of
…show more content…
Analyzing the last line, however, does give us a comparison to the red, glazed, wheelbarrow. The chickens are not emphasized like the wheelbarrow; therefore, I can only assume they are not as important. The word that sticks out the most to me is white; in comparison to red and glazed, the color white invokes the thought of cleaner. These chickens are also “beside” the red wheelbarrow; not helping, in my opinion, just standing. Therefore I feel that the imagery William Carlos Williams creates, when assessing the components separately, then combining them, is of a hard worker that is surrounded by others, not working.

Reference:

Kirszner and Mandell. (2012). Portable Literature:Reading,Reacting,Writing. Nineth Edition. Wadsworth Cengage,

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Imagery is also shown with similes throughout the poem, such as “in their sterile housing they tilt towards these like skiers.” The poem also acts upon our senses, sight when it states “Surrounding them like their last movements (the mash, the…

    • 600 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Sometimes life is best explained in metaphors. Sometimes the hurt, pain, and anger found in life are more easily grasped when one looks at them in terms of other objects. This is how the poem,“The Minefield,” written by Diane Thiel, looks at pain and anger. Written in short and choppy lines with no clear rhythm or rhyming pattern, this poem tells the story of a man who witnessed his friend blown to pieces in a minefield. Because of this, the man who witnessed this terrifying tragedy has grown into an angry and broken soul.…

    • 1130 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The Fire Truck Analysis

    • 85 Words
    • 1 Pages

    One of the principle William uses is that the topic is an everyday subject. The poem, much like most imagist poems, is talking about something that is in everyday life. One can draw that Williams is talking about a fire truck in his poem with words like, “....fire truck moving tense unheeded... (6-9)” The fire truck is something in one's life that would not come as a surprise if one ever saw it.…

    • 85 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He implements metaphor to compare humans to negative objects; this is backed up by his use of structure and punctuation. Not one line in the poem ‘North Coast Town’ is exciting. The sentences almost feel cut short. “A car slows and I chase it”. ‘Two hoods going shooting.’…

    • 1154 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A deep pinkish red spilled out on the river, which moved without sound, and in the morning we would cross the river and march west into the mountains”(68). The author used his imagery here to show the readers that there are instances of harmony and relaxation. By having the reader feel as if they themselves were there…

    • 141 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    William Carlos Williams and Billy Collins are both fantastic poets, with similar structure (or lack thereof) and style of poetry. In each of the combined eight poems, they all contained little to no rhyming and followed unique structure, with little to no repetition in any stanza (the only exception being Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow”). Likewise, both poets typically employ the use of an upbeat and optimistic tone in their poems, though they will both switch to a more neutral tone if the situation requires (Williams’s “Spring and All” and Collins’s “Cliché”). In general, both poets write in a style free of restrictions that allows them to express themselves in any way they deem necessary.…

    • 1145 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    However, we see it even more as we delve deeper into the poem. It is with words and phrases such as “sweet death” and “enduring life” that the author so vividly describes the contrast between a baby and his parents. The author uses his choice of vocabulary to effect the reader. He wants to make them truly understand what he is feeling, and what he is trying to make them feel as well. He also uses his word order to move the poem in certain directions.…

    • 835 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Figurative language sends a reader's sense into overdrive and provide acute specifications of what the author intends top convey. The figurative language in this poem develops the relationship between the speaker and the swamp by describing more in-depth the fear and respect that the character has for this environment. Rather than simple fear and respect, the reader begins to understand the appreciation along with the calamity that the speaker holds for the swamp and the swamp brings to the speaker. This figurative language feeds off of the established hyperbolic analysis and clarifies in stark detail how the speaker and the swamp affect each other. These specific words further develop this complex relationship by providing specific insight into the grand "tango" that the speaker and the swamp undergo…

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In that time, this diction would’ve been used in an everyday conversation whereas now readers may find it hard to read. Nevertheless, Bryant is sure to use other timeless rhetoric techniques and components of poetry so the reader can understand the message Bryant is conveying. The diction Bryant chooses is imperative to his use of imagery. Throughout the poem, Bryant manipulates and even personifies certain aspects of nature to enhance his use of imagery.…

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Napalm Girl

    • 1113 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The use of Alliteration in, “No undergrowth, nothing to relieve the eye.. nineteen miles to the nearest.. civilisation” clearly emphasises how isolated the drover’s wife is and her alienation from the rest of the world. In addition, the experience of the drover’s wife reflects the harsh and the infertile nature of the bush. Due to the fact that living in the bush has stifled and thwarted her development as she has “no time to show” her children love. The effect of the alliteration exposes the responder to a story about the mother’s hardship which instantly makes the responder dislike the bush due to it’s desolation and sameness. Furthermore, the use of descriptive language in the short and truncated sentences “no horizon”, “no ranges in the distance” and “no undergrowth” emphasises the lack of any aspect of the picturesque in the Australian outback.…

    • 1113 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Jacques Prévert 's poem, "to portray a bird" gives unrealistic instructions on the steps to create a painting of a bird. Prévert lived from 1900 to 1977 and this poem was written in 1946 which is part of the "Words" collection. The poem is a version of poetry, written in free verse with six stanzas that contain different lengths of words. The poem uses simple language and most verbs are written in the infinitive. The poem places emphasis on the subject of the painting rather than how to create the painting.…

    • 1442 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Race Poem Analysis

    • 218 Words
    • 1 Pages

    In the poem "The Race" by Sharon Olds, the usage of literary devices conveys the overall meaning of the poem. The author includes enjambment, allusion, and imagery to describe the persistence and relief the main character experiences throughout the poem. The author utilizes enjambment through the poem as a whole, Olds conveys the determination of the character is experiencing by purposely extending the sentences. The never ending sentence creates suspension, and emphasize the journey that is taking place in the poem.…

    • 218 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    This paper will compare and contrast The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot to Howl by Allen Ginsberg. My intent is to illuminate to fellow English writing pupils on the associations and the difference of the two poems referenced above. They compare in that the authors writing styles are unorganized, do not follow the traditional rhythm of poems from that era, and the subject matter appears delusional. They contrast in that Ginsberg poem was to a certain degree easy to comprehend while Eliot’s required supplementary clarifications in order for the audience to understand what he was attempting to depict.. Significant secondary sources include the work about The Waste Land by Pericles Lewis from The Modernism Lab at Yale University website http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/The_Waste_Land.…

    • 135 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    While both poems do mimic the painting, the poets’ gazes are most definitely coloured by their own experiences or stylistic agendas, which causes them to move beyond the painting and incorporate their own interpretations, styles and judgements. Williams’ for example chooses to completely eliminate the ship from the painting and concentrate only on the ploughman, amalgamating the rest of the images present in the canvas to “the whole pageantry.” This works well for his sparse, streamlined imagist style. But the larger interpretations in this case are in Auden’s poem. It is important to consider that “Musée des Beaux Arts” was written in 1939, after Auden's visit to China, where he had witnessed the effects of the Second Sino-Japanese war.…

    • 1570 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Poetry is a very beautiful and unique form of literature, but it often is given a bad reputation. The main reason being is people overanalyze it, instead of taking in the beauty of it. Billy Collins’s poem “Introduction of Poetry” explains how people overanalyze and take away from the beauty of a poem. The speaker suggests ways of reading poetry that allow the reader to understand the poem, but not take away from the beauty of it. Billy Collins quotes “I ask them to take a poem / and hold it up to the light / like a color slide” (lines 1-3) meaning take the poem that is being read and analyze it, but do not analyze it to the point you loose sight of the beauty or “colors”.…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays