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

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

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