Syntax and Morphological Analysis of the Poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams Accordingly, the rhetoric idea learnt in writing poetry is found in the work of Williams. Analysts found that the author believes that localism aline may lead to culture. Ideally, the factor of imagism is well designed in The Red Wheelbarrow, giving credit to the poem under discussion. In this paper, the author will analyze various features of this poem, giving phonological, lexical, syntactic, and sematic features. This will help in giving a clear perception of the poem in terms of internalizing the context the author wanted to pass.
Brief Account of the Author William Carlos Williams is a poet with an immense influence in the concept of poetry. He had various literatures with varying styles and techniques in his work. From the different literature that he did, William was quite experimental following the experience he had in writing. According to the readers, his work remains fresh and clear in their minds as it rejects sentimentality and vagueness. The work also reflects the emotional part that restrains and heightens the sensory experience that articulates various speech ideas.
The work of Carlos is inspired by other poets together with many generations that will follow. A general overview of his work shows that the author was influenced by many “-isms”. Brief Account of the Work The Red Wheelbarrow is among the many pieces of poetry written by William Carlos Williams. It is a simple poem composed of a single sentence broken up at numerous intervals. According to critics, one may find it truthful to highlight that “so much depends upon” each line of the literature work done by the author. This follows the fact that the design of the poem gives its meaning.
The Major Theme of the Poem The Red Wheelbarrow is a poem that has a bright colored picture. This contrasts the existence between the white chicken beside the red wheelbarrow that relates to the colors of the world lived by people. The idea that the poem is glazed with rain takes the reader back to the smells of the youth during the time when storm breaks and nature remains fresh and clean. The same is depicted when the sun is seen to rise from the back out. The wheelbarrow as used in the poem is a symbol that expresses the idea of sustenance.
The opening line of the poem also tells a lot. It indicates that the author wanted to write a poem that could develop the reader with a thought process which concerns what is significant in life. The same would help in linking the reader to the memories of their senses during the past based on the experiences a person may have to some things. Linguistic Presentation of the Theme Phonological Features Phonology in literature describes sounds as used in the poem. According to the above literature, the author tunes the poem in a certain way that attracts the attention of the reader.
Identifying the same in the first and second stanzas, the author links them with a long “o” in the words “so” and “barrow”. The same stanzas also show the linkage using the short “u” in some words like “much”, “upon” and “a”. The author uses “I” and “r” to interlace the immediate core stanzas as recorded in the second and third stanzas. The two given sounds are not in the first and fourth stanzas but dominate other stanzas. The above named simple device distinguishes the framing stanzas from other central stanzas. One distinction found in the poem is that a central stanza is mellifluous, as the frame stanza is choppy.
Then the author links the honeyed and the choppy in the third and fourth stanzas. The author joins them by means of a parallel construction: this is seen by the long vowels in “glazed with rain” which matches those indicated in “beside the white”. Identifying the last stanza shows that the author closed another loop as the sound “ch” and “ens” shown in the last word of the poem tries to produce an echo of the sounds initially in line: “so much depends”. In the fourth, sixth, and eight lines, the author uses one word: “barrow”, “water”, and “chickens”.
The above words are stressed on the first syllable but weaken on the second one. The use of the above words gives credit on the quality of the poem in terms of phonology. Ideally, the author gives enough idea in terms of understanding by use of words that are very creative. Graphical Features Understanding the poem well, the reader can understand that it is a sentence “So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens,” that needs division into four stanzas. The four stanzas will take the design of three words and a single word.
The one word takes the form of two syllables as the three-word line has various syllables in the first and the last time. Nevertheless, only three syllables appear on their two middle occurrences. As mentioned above, the sixteen-word sentence remains to be banal: however, it changes into a great poem without displacing any word except the typographical as shown by the sixteen words existing in diverse zones. Lexical Features Under this analysis, the writer will focus majorly on lines 3 to 4. The author of the poem concentrated on the image of the wheelbarrow, introduced as starkly.
Accordingly, the vivid word “red” gives a lights-up to the scene. One may notice that the monosyllable words given in the third line elongates the line. This puts some unusual pause between the word “wheel” and “barrow”. This form of writing has some effects of breaking the image to its most basic parts. Using the sentence as a painter, the author of the poem breaks up some words with the aim of ordering to identify the object quite closely. Majoring the analysis in line five and six, one can identify the monosyllable words that elongate the lines with the assistance of the literary device assonance.
In this part, the author uses the word “glazed” to evoke another painterly image. As the reader starts to notice the wheelbarrow in a closer perspective, the rain transforms it as well. This gives the poem a new and fresher look. The last line gives some final brushstroke to the “still life” poem. The use of another color, “white” is used to give a contrast on the earlier “red” together with the unusual view of the ordinary wheelbarrow which is complete. Syntactic Features The poem under study is formed by a sixteen-word sentence. With the above notion, the poem does not have any complete sentence in each stanza.
In fact, the individual stanza is a short phrase used to convey a certain message. The individual stanza has four words with the first line of every stanza having three words. The second line has only one word. It seems like the clause seen as an object in the beginning of the sentence gives the reader some feeling that the head is heavier compared to the feet. In the above top-heavy structure, the reader may be having some feelings of heaviness and stress, implying the pressure of life. Semantic Features Metaphor: The wheelbarrow is described as “glazed with rainwater”, that is, shining, with a suggestion of hardness.
The author sees the wheelbarrow immediately after the rain, when the bright sun has created the wheelbarrow’s shiny surface and has made the chickens immaculately white. In nature, this scene occurs when dark clouds still cover a portion of the sky. In this short time after the rain has ceased, the chickens have emerged from whatever refuge they sought during the storm. They are reassured that they can begin normal living again and do so calmly. The metaphor “glazed” captures time in the poem. In a moment, the wheelbarrow will be dry, its sheen gone, yet the hardness suggested by the metaphor is not irrelevant.
This moment is like others in life. Periods of danger, terror, and stress do not last. The glaze, like the rainbow, signals a return to normality of restoration. The poem creates a memorable picture of this recurring process; reflections upon its meaning may provide the reassurance that makes us more durable. Contrast: We can identify two contrasts in the poem. One is between the latest advances in machine technology and the continuing but overlooked importance of elementary machines. The other is between the universal and age-old scene depicted in the poem and the radically new free verse form in which it exists.
