The Red Wheelbarrow (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

“The Red Wheelbarrow” is a perfect example of an imagist poem. In it, Williams focuses on an object instead of using the poem to explore an idea or express a sentiment. The poem focuses closely on the image of the wheelbarrow, eliminating all else. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren in Understanding Poetry see this microscopic vision of the wheelbarrow as a new vision of the ordinary.

Reading this poem is like peering at an ordinary object through a pin prick in a piece of cardboard. The fact that the tiny hole arbitrarily frames the object endows it with an exciting freshness that seems to hover on the verge of revelation.

James E. B. Breslin, in his book William Carlos Williams: An American Artist, also explores this new vision of the wheelbarrow:

The scene is not entirely bare: the wheelbarrow is red and it has just been rained on, giving it a fresh “glazed” appearance. A spare, clinical manner it is clear, asserts by relief the primary color and novelty that are there. We are brought down into a new world.