The Red Wheelbarrow: Poem & Literary Devices - StudySmarter

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The Red Wheelbarrow

Can a 16-word poem evoke emotion and feel complete? What’s so special about the red wheelbarrow next to the white chickens? Read on, and you will discover how William Carlos Williams’s short poem 'The Red Wheelbarrow' has become a fixture of 20th-century poetic history.

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• 7 minutes reading time
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• Fact Checked Content
• Last Updated: 02.12.2022
• Published at: 28.04.2022
• 7 min reading time

• American Drama
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Contents

• American Drama
• American Literary Movements
• American Literature
• American Poetry
• 77 Dream Songs
• A Barred Owl
• A R Ammons
• A Red Red Rose
• A Story
• Adrienne Rich
• Alexander Pope
• Allen Ginsberg
• Allen Tate
• An American Sunrise
• And death shall have no dominion
• Andrew Marvell
• Anne Bradstreet
• Aphra Behn
• As I Walked Out One Evening
• As Kingfishers Catch Fire
• Balder Dead
• Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter
• Ben Jonson
• Beowulf Poetry
• Binsey Poplars
• Briefings Collection
• Carl Sandburg
• Carolyn Forche
• Cathy Song
• Chicago Poem
• Concord Hymn
• Concord Hymn by Jack Spicer
• Crossing the Bar
• Crossing the Swamp
• Daddy
• Danse Russe
• Derek Walcott
• Diving into the Wreck
• Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
• Dover Beach
• Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes
• Dylan Thomas
• E. E. Cummings
• Easter 1916 Poem
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Edmund Spenser
• Edward Kamau Brathwaite
• Elegy For A Jet Pilot
• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
• Elegy for Jane
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning Biography
• Elizabeth Bishop
• Emancipation from British Dependence Poem
• Epitaph on the World
• European Poetry
• Eurydice
• Ezra Pound
• Fantasy
• Five Flights Up
• Fog
• For Jane Meyers
• For That He Looked Not Upon Her
• For the Union Dead
• Frank O'Hara
• Garrett Hongo
• Gary Snyder
• George Gascoigne
• George Oppen
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Gertrude Stein(1874-1946)
• Gwendolyn Bennett
• Gwendolyn Brooks
• Hart Crane
• Helen
• Helen In Egypt
• Henry David Thoreau
• Here Philip Larkin
• Hilda Doolittle
• Homer
• How We Became Human
• I Carry Your Heart with Me
• I, Too Langston Hughes
• Idylls of the Kings
• If I Could Tell You
• If you forget me Pablo Neruda
• In Just
• In the Waiting Room
• Jack Spicer
• James Schuyler
• John Ashbery
• John Berryman
• John Crowe Ransom
• Joy Harjo
• Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
• Law Like Love
• Leaves of Grass
• Leslie Marmon Silko
• Let America be America again
• Li-Young Lee
• Life Studies
• Litany
• Lorine Niedecker
• Louise Glück
• Mary Oliver
• Matthew Arnold
• May Swenson
• Meaningful Love
• Midsummer, Tobago
• Mountains and Rivers Without End
• Musee des Beaux Arts (1939)
• My Papa's Waltz
• My People Langston Hughes
• Ode to the Confederate Dead
• Of Being Numerous
• Ogun by Kamau Brathwaite
• On Being Brought from Africa to America
• On Her Loving Two Equally
• On My First Sonne
• On The Banks Of Ohio
• On the Bus with Rosa Parks
• One Art
• One Hundred Love Sonnets XVII
• Pablo Neruda
• Parsley
• Paterson by William Carlos Willaims
• Phenomenal Woman
• Philip Freneau
• Phillis Wheatley
• Picture Bride
• Pied Beauty
• Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral
• Poetry of Departures
• Rebecca Hammond Lard
• Richard Eberhart
• Richard Wilbur
• Rights of Passage
• Rita Dove
• Robert Browning
• Robert Hayden
• Robert Lowell
• Roots
• Sailing to Byzantium
• Seamus Heaney Digging
• Seasons of the Soul
• Sestina
• Sic Vita Thoreau
• Sir Philip Sidney
• Skunk Hour
• Some Trees
• Some Trees Poem
• Songs of Innocence
• Sonnet 130
• Sonnet 138
• Sonnet 18
• Sonnet 29
• Sonnet 65
• Sonnet 73
• Spring and All
• Storm Warnings
• Storyteller
• Sunday Morning
• Sylvia Plath
• TS Eliot
• The Author to Her Book
• The Bean Eaters
• The Black Walnut Tree
• The Bridge
• The British Prison Ship
• The Buried Lake
• The Cantos
• The Centaur
• The Colonel
• The Convergence Of The Twain
• The Day Lady Died
• The Death of a Toad
• The Definition of Love
• The Empty Glass
• The Faerie Queene
• The Groundhog
• The Hollow Men
• The Indian Burying Ground
• The Juggler
• The Kaddish
• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
• The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
• The Man He Killed
• The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
• The Odyssey
• The People, Yes
• The Rape of the Lock
• The Raven Edgar Allan Poe
• The Red Wheelbarrow
• The Second Coming
• The Shield of Achilles
• The Unknown Citizen
• The Waking
• The Weary Blues
• The Wild Honey Suckle
• The Wild Iris
• The Windhover
• Theodore Roethke
• Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
• Those Winter Sundays
• Thou Blind Man's Mark
• To Brooklyn Bridge
• To Helen
• To His Coy Mistress
• To My Dear and Loving Husband
• To Penshurst
• To a Dark Girl
• Ulysses
• Uriel
• Walden
• Wallace Stevens
• Walt Whitman
• We Real Cool
• When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
• William Butler Yeats
• William Carlos Williams
• Woman Work
• XIV
• Yellow Light
• [Buffalo Bill 's] by E. E. Cummings
• American Regionalism Literature
• American Short Fiction
• Dramatists
• Essayists
• Literary Criticism and Theory
• Literary Devices
• Literary Elements
• Literary Movements
• Literary Studies
• Non-Fiction Authors
• Novelists
• Poets

Contents

• Fact Checked Content
• Last Updated: 02.12.2022
• 7 min reading time

• Content creation process designed by Lily Hulatt
• Content sources cross-checked by Gabriel Freitas
• Content quality checked by Gabriel Freitas

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'The Red Wheelbarrow' poem

'The Red Wheelbarrow' (1923) is a poem by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963). It originally appeared in the poetry collection Spring and All (1923). Initially, it was entitled 'XXII' as it was the 22nd poem in the collection. Composed of just 16 words in four separated stanzas, 'The Red Wheelbarrow' is sparsely written but stylistically rich.

so much dependsupona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the whitechickens."

William Carlos Williams: life and career

William Carlos Williams was born and raised in Rutherford, New Jersey. Upon graduation from medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, Williams returned to Rutherford and began his own medical practice. It was unusual among poets of the time to have a full-time job apart from poetry. Williams, however, drew inspiration from his patients and fellow residents of Rutherford for his writing.

Critics consider Williams to be both a modernist and imagist poet. His early works, including 'The Red Wheelbarrow,' are hallmarks of Imagism in the early 20th-century American poetry scene. Williams later broke from Imagism and became known as a Modernist poet. He wanted to move away from the classical traditions and styles of European poets, and American poets that inherited these styles. Williams sought to reflect the cadence and dialect of everyday Americans in his poetry.

Imagism is a poetry movement in the early 20th-century in America that emphasized clear, concise diction to convey defined images.

'The Red Wheelbarrow' is part of a poetry collection entitled Spring and All. While critics generally refer to Spring and All as a poetry collection, Williams also included prose pieces intermixed with the poems. Many consider Spring and All an important comparison point for another famous 20th-century poem published in the same year, TS Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). Williams was not fond of 'The Waste Land' for he disliked Eliot’s use of classical imagery, dense metaphors, and the poem's pessimistic outlook. In Spring and All, Williams extolls humanity and resilience, perhaps as a direct response to The Waste Land.

Fig. 1 - A red wheelbarrow atop a green field.

'The Red Wheelbarrow' poem meaning

'The Red Wheelbarrow,' short and sparse as it may be, is ripe for analysis. Of its 16 words and 8 lines, only the first two lines and first of four stanzas don’t directly describe the titular red wheelbarrow. Right off the bat, Williams tells us that this wheelbarrow carries great importance as 'so much depends/upon' (1-2) it. He then goes on to describe the wheelbarrow – it is red, 'glazed with rain/water' (5-6), and sits 'beside the white/chickens' (7-8).

What does that mean? Why does so much depend upon the red wheelbarrow? To understand, it is important to know a little bit about Imagist poetry and William Carlos Williams. As previously mentioned, Imagism was an early 20th-century movement in American poetry. Imagist poetry is characterized by clean, clear diction used to evoke sharp images. Rather than rely on overly poetic, flowery language, Williams diverges from the Romantic and Victorian poetic styles of the past with his brief and to-the-point poem. There is one central image, one that he paints vividly despite the short nature of the poem - the red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater, beside the white chickens.

Can you picture that in your head? I’m sure from his description you have a clear picture of just what the red wheelbarrow looks like and where it is situated despite it being described in just 16 words. That is the beauty of Imagism!

Another facet of Imagism and Modernism, in addition to clear, concise writing, is attention to the small moments in everyday life. Here, rather than write grandly about battlefields or mythical creatures, Williams chooses a familiar, commonplace sight. 'So much depends/upon' (1-2) this red wheelbarrow, implying that so much depends upon these small moments in our everyday lives. Williams captures a moment in time and chooses to draw our attention to one small moment that we may overlook as ordinary and even meaningless. He breaks this moment down into its parts, separating wheel from barrow and rain from water, making sure the reader pays attention to each small detail in the picture he paints.

Broader connections can be made by examining the two colors used in the poem. Between describing the wheelbarrow as red, in reference to life and vitality as it is the color of blood, and the chickens as white, a color symbolizing peace and harmony, you can look at the broader picture of what Williams describes. The wheelbarrow and chickens taken together imply that we are looking at farmland or a household that grows plants and raises farm animals. By emphasizing red and white, Williams shows that farming is a peaceful, fulfilling livelihood.

Fig. 2 - Two white chickens stand on a dirt path.

'The Red Wheelbarrow' literary devices

Williams makes use of various literary devices in 'The Red Wheelbarrow' to fully portray the central image. The most notable literary device Williams used is enjambment. The entire poem could be read as one single sentence. However, by breaking it down and continuing each line into the next without punctuation, Williams builds anticipation in the reader. You know that barrow naturally follows wheel, but Williams makes you wait for the connection to be made by separating it into two lines – just as he does with rain and water.

Enjambment is a poetic device in which the poet does not use punctuation or grammatical pauses to separate lines. Instead, the lines carry over into the next line.

Williams also uses juxtaposition. We first encounter 'the red wheel/barrow' (3-4) before ending with 'beside the white/chickens.' (7-8) These two images contrast sharply with one another. The use of a red wheelbarrow as the central image juxtaposes with what poetry had historically been about – grand emotions, historical events, twisted tales. Here, Williams uses a simple, everyday image to ground his poem, juxtaposing the medium with its muse.

Williams as a poet sought to represent a truly American voice in poetry, one that mimicked the cadence and intonation of the way Americans speak naturally. 'The Red Wheelbarrow' eschews formalistic, rigid poetic structures such as sonnet or haiku. Though it follows a repetitive structure, it is a free verse style invented by Williams to suit his poetic purposes.

The Red Wheelbarrow - Key takeaways

• 'The Red Wheelbarrow' (1923) is an example of Imagist poetry by American poet William Carlos Williams.

• The poem originally appeared in Spring and All (1923), a poetry and prose collection by Williams.

• At just 16 words, the poem represents the use of the concise diction and sharp imagery employed by Imagist poems.

• The poem emphasizes the importance of everyday moments and the small details that make up every facet of our lives.

• Williams also makes reference to farming as a vital, peaceful livelihood.

• The poem uses enjambment, juxtaposition, imagery, and free verse to depict its central image.

• 'The Red Wheelbarrow' endures as an important Imagist poem and example of how impactful such a short poem can be.

Similar topics in English Literature

• Dramatists
• Literary Studies
• Literary Criticism and Theory
• Poets
• Non-Fiction Authors
• Literary Movements
• Novelists
• American Drama
• American Literature
• American Short Fiction
• Essayists
• Literary Elements
• American Literary Movements
• Literary Devices
• American Poetry
• American Regionalism Literature

Related topics to American Poetry

• Sonnet 73
• Philip Freneau
• Allen Ginsberg
• Sestina
• Musee des Beaux Arts (1939)
• Yellow Light
• Robert Lowell
• Allen Tate
• The Bean Eaters
• Frank O'Hara
• Concord Hymn
• Anne Bradstreet
• Dover Beach
• Cathy Song
• Joy Harjo
• For That He Looked Not Upon Her
• The Death of a Toad
• On Being Brought from Africa to America
• Carolyn Forche
• Fog
• Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral
• Jack Spicer
• Songs of Innocence
• Pablo Neruda
• Phenomenal Woman
• Adrienne Rich
• As Kingfishers Catch Fire
• Dylan Thomas
• An American Sunrise
• On the Bus with Rosa Parks
• Ulysses
• I, Too Langston Hughes
• The Shield of Achilles
• Sonnet 138
• The Author to Her Book
• The Rape of the Lock
• The Red Wheelbarrow
• Diving into the Wreck
• The Indian Burying Ground
• TS Eliot
• The Lake Isle of Innisfree
• The Odyssey
• The Definition of Love
• If you forget me Pablo Neruda
• Ezra Pound
• Edmund Spenser
• Pied Beauty
• The Black Walnut Tree
• Leaves of Grass
• Easter 1916 Poem
• The Kaddish
• Daddy
• Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
• Homer
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Crossing the Swamp
• William Butler Yeats
• Briefings Collection
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning Biography
• A Red Red Rose
• Sailing to Byzantium
• To Helen
• The British Prison Ship
• Elizabeth Bishop
• Li-Young Lee
• The Faerie Queene
• Walt Whitman
• We Real Cool
• Fantasy
• Derek Walcott
• Sic Vita Thoreau
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• The Hollow Men
• William Carlos Williams
• Walden
• Uriel
• The Second Coming
• The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
• The Weary Blues
• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
• Sylvia Plath
• In the Waiting Room
• Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes
• The Windhover
• Louise Glück
• George Gascoigne
• Henry David Thoreau
• Gwendolyn Bennett
• Rita Dove
• Mary Oliver
• Here Philip Larkin
• Sonnet 18
• Thou Blind Man's Mark
• Parsley
• Those Winter Sundays
• Andrew Marvell
• The Unknown Citizen
• Ben Jonson
• Gwendolyn Brooks
• When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
• Law Like Love
• Poetry of Departures
• Richard Wilbur
• To a Dark Girl
• Litany
• Helen
• To My Dear and Loving Husband
• Robert Browning
• A Barred Owl
• One Art
• Phillis Wheatley
• How We Became Human
• The Groundhog
• Ogun by Kamau Brathwaite
• If I Could Tell You
• Garrett Hongo
• One Hundred Love Sonnets XVII
• Woman Work
• The Centaur
• Eurydice
• Sonnet 29
• My Papa's Waltz
• Gertrude Stein(1874-1946)
• Seamus Heaney Digging
• Elegy for Jane
• Binsey Poplars
• The Colonel
• Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter
• Leslie Marmon Silko
• In Just
• Some Trees Poem
• European Poetry
• Let America be America again
• The Empty Glass
• Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
• Alexander Pope
• Edward Kamau Brathwaite
• John Crowe Ransom
• The Wild Iris
• Hart Crane
• John Ashbery
• [Buffalo Bill 's] by E. E. Cummings
• The People, Yes
• Crossing the Bar
• The Wild Honey Suckle
• XIV
• To Brooklyn Bridge
• Balder Dead
• Midsummer, Tobago
• Spring and All
• The Bridge
• Beowulf Poetry
• Danse Russe
• Matthew Arnold
• The Waking
• The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
• Epitaph on the World
• Emancipation from British Dependence Poem
• The Convergence Of The Twain
• Idylls of the Kings
• Picture Bride
• Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
• The Cantos
• Storyteller
• Mountains and Rivers Without End
• Paterson by William Carlos Willaims
• Of Being Numerous
• Rights of Passage
• Storm Warnings
• Ode to the Confederate Dead
• The Juggler
• Sonnet 65
• Wallace Stevens
• Sonnet 130
• Sunday Morning
• E. E. Cummings
• The Day Lady Died
• And death shall have no dominion
• As I Walked Out One Evening
• To His Coy Mistress
• Hilda Doolittle
• Five Flights Up
• The Raven Edgar Allan Poe
• On My First Sonne
• To Penshurst
• May Swenson
• I Carry Your Heart with Me
• Carl Sandburg
• Chicago Poem
• John Berryman
• 77 Dream Songs
• Sir Philip Sidney
• The Man He Killed
• On Her Loving Two Equally
• Theodore Roethke
• Aphra Behn
• Robert Hayden
• My People Langston Hughes
• Helen In Egypt
• Skunk Hour
• Life Studies
• For the Union Dead
• Seasons of the Soul
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Frequently Asked Questions about The Red Wheelbarrow

What is the literal meaning of the poem 'The Red Wheelbarrow'?

The literal meaning, by which we ignore all subtext and possible subjective interpretations, is Williams’s effort to paint a clear image of a red wheelbarrow. The literal meaning, then, is just this - a red wheelbarrow, exactly as described, next to the white chickens. Williams asks the reader to determine why the red wheelbarrow carries so much importance.

What is the metaphor in 'The Red Wheelbarrow'?

'The Red Wheelbarrow' rejects metaphor by instead representing an image for what it is - the red wheelbarrow is a red wheelbarrow, glazed with rain, beside the white chickens. While the colors may represent broader themes and the central image be used to give importance to farming as a livelihood, at its core, the red wheelbarrow is a red wheelbarrow.

Why is 'The Red Wheelbarrow' so famous?

'The Red Wheelbarrow' is famous as a perfect example of Imagist poetry, and as a testament to the power of poetry even in such a short form. Williams is well-known as a modernist and imagist poet, and 'The Red Wheelbarrow' could be considered the magnum opus of his early Imagist poems.

What was the central image of 'The Red Wheelbarrow' poem?

The central image of 'The Red Wheelbarrow' is in the title - a red wheelbarrow! Every line of the poem, except for the first two, directly describes the red wheelbarrow and its location in space. The wheelbarrow is red, it is glazed with rainwater, and it is beside the white chickens.

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