The Red Wheelbarrow: Themes

The Sentimental Attachment to Rural Life

The speaker of Williams’s poem appears to have a sentimental attachment to rural life. They indicate as much in the opening stanzas, where they invest a wheelbarrow with great significance: “so much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow” (lines 1–4). We don’t know what, exactly, depends upon this red wheelbarrow. But we do know that wheelbarrows are useful tools for building and gardening, which are essential components of everyday life in the country. As such, the significance of this wheelbarrow likely relates to the forms of labor that characterize rural life. The presence of the white chickens beside the red wheelbarrow further adds to the impression that the speaker is in a rural setting. Again, we don’t know why the speaker has such a strong emotional response to this country scene. Perhaps they grew up in the country but now live in the city. Or maybe they’ve just read a lot of pastoral literature and associate rural life with a longing for simplicity. Regardless of the specifics, the mere fact of the speaker’s emotional response suggests a sentimental or even nostalgic feeling of attachment to rural life.

The Encroachment of Modern Technology

One possible explanation for the speaker’s sentimental attachment to country living may relate to a sense that modern technology is encroaching on that way of life. This latter theme is felt rather than directly stated in the poem. Here it’s important to recall that Williams wrote “The Red Wheelbarrow” in 1923, at a time when all sorts of new technologies were rapidly transforming every sphere of modern life. This rapid transformation was not limited to cities. Indeed, the countryside increasingly felt the effects of modernity through the mechanization of agriculture. The normalization of labor-saving technologies—most notably the steam-powered tractor—increased farmers’ productivity enormously and quickly made both human and animal labor obsolete. This historical background may help explain why, when they look at a wheelbarrow and some chickens, the speaker feels a pang of emotion. The speaker asserts that “so much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow” (lines 1–4), but this claim may paradoxically reflect their sense of loss as modernity encroaches on the countryside.

The Fracturing of Perception

If modern technology is indeed encroaching on a beloved way of life, then it would help explain why the speaker has a subtly fractured perception of the world. Williams indicates this fracturing in two ways. The first and most obvious way relates to the splitting of two compound nouns in the poem’s middle stanzas (lines 3–6):

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

Just as the compound noun “wheelbarrow” is split into two words, “wheel / barrow,” so too is “rainwater” split into “rain / water.” The splitting of these two compounds has a melancholy effect, suggesting as it does the breakdown of wholes into parts. This fracturing may reflect the speaker’s perception of the world, the essential wholeness of which is coming apart. The second way Williams suggests the fracturing of perception is quite subtle, and it relates to the same two stanzas quoted above. Although both stanzas refer to the same object, they relate distinct images: the first describes the wheelbarrow itself, and the second describes the wheelbarrow’s rainwater glaze. What’s notable here is how the speaker’s observation of the glaze is slightly displaced in time. This displacement suggests that on the level of perception, the speaker experiences the glaze as something separate from the wheelbarrow.