The Red Wheelbarrow Symbolism

Achieving the American Dream has been the ideal for people living in the United States for decades. People believed that the way to get there was through hard work in an opportune country filled with freedom, equality and ability. Some people think that owning a house with a white picket-fence is the American Dream while others think that it is becoming a celebrity with a lot of money. After the Industrial Revolution, many jobs were created in the growing industries and American society was beginning to flourish into the modern era. In addition to the positive aspects of the modern era, people experience the negatives every day through the influence of the American Dream. The American Dream is a fantasy that has not come true for the millions

that are toiling in the system hoping to get a piece of the wealth which America so liberally shares with its rich upper class. In “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams and “The Ballad of the Landlord” by Langston Hughes, the American dream that has permeated American history is believed to be a myth in today’s post-industrialized world.
In "The Red Wheelbarrow" and "The Ballad of the Landlord", the motif of color is used to explore and observe the American opportunity, or lack thereof, of the surrounding society.

While color can have many purposes, in The Red Wheelbarrow, color is used to provide certain farm objects with meaning and texture. When Williams writes, “red wheel/barrow… rain/water…white/chickens, he puts forth three objects, the wheelbarrow, the rain and the chickens, that each display a specific color. These colors, red, white and blue, are symbolic in American society because of their relation to our nation’s colors. When put together, these three colors have come to symbolize the ideals of America involving freedom and opportunity, but also to symbolize the American Dream which permeates through society, affecting all American people. The poem’s connection to the American Dream helps observe the ideal, that hard work bring success, specifically because of the hard work farmer’s do to provide food for the whole country. The farmer not only represents the ability to achieve success through hard work, but also the flaws of American capitalism and industrialization. After the Industrial Revolution of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, many craftsman and manual laborers lost their jobs because the industries were growing and their jobs were obsolete. Williams uses the red wheelbarrow to display the essentiality of a farmer’s job, and similar jobs, to the American society, because of the farmer’s

ability to provide healthy food. In “The Ballad of the Landlord”, the poem is colorless until the last line where Hughes writes, “JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL!" He introduces the lens of color in the last line to display the racial oppression of society. By introducing racial oppression and the unfairness of society, Hughes allows for color to display a lack of opportunity. The tenant's identity as a black man influences the situation where he originally asks the landlord’s to fix his apartment, but the influence of racial oppression makes it seem as if he was threatening the landlord. As conveyed by the motif of color, in a time period after the abolishing of slavery, a major American institution, and after the Industrial Revolution, opportunity in America was, and still is, very scarce.
In addition to the lack of opportunity, “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “The Ballad of the Landlord” both embody the spirit of dependence in a time period in which the surrounding society greatly influenced survival, such as the Great Depression.

While many aspects of society may seem to stand alone, everything is connected and dependent on each other for success. In “The Red Wheelbarrow”, the apparent dependence upon the red wheelbarrow, the rain and the chickens displays a similarity to an American farmer’s dependence on these essential objects to run a productive farm. Williams paints the setting with the bare essentials necessary for humans to survive and remain healthy. Williams writes, “so much depends/upon/a red wheel/barrow,” to explore the American belief of dependence upon hard work provides success in a pre-industrialized world. However, in today’s society, many jobs are becoming obsolete due to the technological revolution. Americans are becoming less dependent on others as they used to be in the past suggesting the mythical nature of the American dream. In “The Ballad of the Landlord”, the relationship between the landlord and tenant is displayed as a dependent relationship because of the landlord’s superior ability to support the tenant. The poem is written as a ballad with continuous quatrains of lines that each have 3 or four stressed syllables and an ABCB rhyme scheme, forming a continuous playful song-like rhythm that helps portray the dependence and

vulnerability of the tenant to his landlord. The sing-song rhythm, almost childish, gives the impression of the tenant as a child addressing a higher power like a parent. As a result, the tenant is degraded and portrayed as an insignificant figure in the hierarchy, who largely depends on the higher figure for support and security, implied by "my roof has sprung a leak" where the tenant now looks for security from his landlord. In addition to the childish rhythm, the first two stanzas begin with "Landlord, Landlord" of which the repetition builds onto the immature mood evoked by the ballad rhythm and rhyme scheme. These lines capture the dependence and desperation in the tenant's tone as he addresses the superior figure. The dependent relationship between the tenant and the landlord represent broken and especially unequal relationships between social groups of different standing, particularly African Americans and White Americans in twentieth century America.
As time has progressed, American society has changed and developed in many directions. Americans have experienced times of troubling depression, continuous war, economic boom, and personal success. The American Dream has developed and changed with time from an ideal with good values to poor values. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the values of the American Dream changed, instead of striving for equality, the characters try to strive for excessive amount of money and wealth. In addition, the American Dream’s belief of perfection and success is impossible in a world full of socioeconomic and racial oppression. Over the course of history, the American Dream has remained an unattainable legend to all Americans and will continue to be a legend for all of America’s future.