The Red Wheelbarrow

The Red Wheelbarrow Literary Elements

Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View

The speaker is a third person narrator, who is likely a stand-in for Williams himself. The voice is extremely objective and unaffected.

Form and Meter

The poem consists of four couplets that contain no punctuation.

Metaphors and Similes

N/A

Alliteration and Assonance

N/A

Irony

N/A

Genre

Nature poetry

Setting

Rural, likely a farm

Tone

Flat and objective

Protagonist and Antagonist

There is no human presence in the poem, but the red wheelbarrow could be considered the protagonist

Major Conflict

N/A

Climax

N/A

Foreshadowing

The lines "so much depends / upon" foreshadows the wheelbarrow's centrality to the poem as a whole.

Understatement

N/A

Allusions

N/A

Metonymy and Synecdoche

N/A

Personification

N/A

Hyperbole

N/A

Onomatopoeia

N/A

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