The Red Wheelbarrow Meaning

The red wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams is a short image poem that describes the scene of a red wheelbarrow after the rain next to some white chickens. This simple scene described in a few short lines paints such a big picture that can be taken in many different ways. Right off the back someone may see this poem just as it is and nothing else and another person may see that this picture has a deeper meaning and wonder what it is actually trying to portray.

William Carlos Williams, who was born in 1883 on September 17, in Rutherford, New Jersey, is a man of many talents ranging from his background as a "Poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, and physician has always had a creative and imitative mind which made his work so great. He could even take something as simple as a note to his wife and make it a good work of work. (William Carlos Williams)

These eight simple lines of the poem can mean so much more than what they say. It may provoke some deeper emotions from curiosity to complete understanding with little to go on. By breaking down the play into two sections one can understand

that this poem on a deeper level. With the first four lines that say "So much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow" (Kennedy 667) from this part of the poem one can determine that the red wheelbarrow has a greater job than what it is initially used for, and this shows that people may actually depend on it more than they think they do. The second part of the poem is "glazed with rain / water / beside the white / chickens" (Kennedy 667) tells you what the wheelbarrow looks like and what is around it. The scene described in this part is that it most likely recently stopped running and the fact that it is next to some white chickens makes one think the setting is on a farm. One may be able to see that the red wheelbarrow is near a barn possible leaning on it. The farm may be on a large open field of lush green grass on a warm spring day with a few large oak trees in the background. Getting all of this for such a short poem shows why it is so good at making great image poetry something William Carlos Williams is well known for, along with modernism and objectivist.
Now after getting and understanding the poem on a visual level one wants to know what the picture painted with words means on a symbolic level.

Taking the first line "so much depends" this phrase shows that whatever is being talked about has a very important role. That important role may apply to one or many things but in this case, it may apply to the wheelbarrow. This raises a question of what exactly is it that depends so much upon a wheelbarrow and the answer to that is question will be determined from the rest of the poem. The final two lines "beside the white / chickens" lets the reader know this wheelbarrow may be used on a farm which shows what is depending on the wheelbarrow and that might be a lard part of agriculture. A wheelbarrow is a tool that has made the hard task of moving heavy things easier and making things getting done in a timely fashion more

possible.
Let us go back a bit, is it also possible that the thing that so much depends on is, in fact, all three parts of the poem. The wheelbarrow, the rainwater, and the chickens. These three things may be the main factors that make up the new world that we live in. The first being the wheelbarrow which represents the tools people have made and developed over the years to make the things we do easier. The second part which is rain water or more specifically just water, without it, nothing would be possible from something as small as using it to cleanse ourselves to using it to keep our bodies going for people are about seventy present water. Now the last part of the poem talks about chickens which are represent the food we acquire over time like which we have learned to do the hunting from as far back as possible, for if you do not hunt you do not eat and if you do not eat you do not live to pass on you knowledge which is the main reason for human existence. So these three simple things do in fact have so much depending on them that it is commonly overlooked because people have already accepted these things as they are and incorporated them into their everyday living. For without them, we would not all be where we are today.