¶ … Proletarian Portrait" is a poem by William Carlos Williams that presents a brief snapshot of a working class woman, a proletarian. She is bogged down by two stigmas: class and gender. Because the reader has no other cues of the woman's identity, it is also possible that she is not white, either. Being of the non-dominant culture would make the woman an emblem of the underclass, presuming the setting is in North America or Europe. Williams's poetic portrait depicts the harrowing effects of labor in the capitalist system, sending a strong Marxist message warning about problems such as alienation. Williams uses poetic devices including irony and imagery, in order make strong social commentary about alienation and class conflict. The capitalist wage structure has beaten the dignity out of the woman featured in "Proletarian Portrait." A sense of heaviness, loneliness and sadness pervades the imagery in "Proletarian Portrait," allowing Williams to achieve social commentary with unusual structure, irony, and imagery. One of the ways Williams gives the poem a heavy feeling is by describing the woman as being "big" in the first line. The reader is therefore introduced to the woman right away as a heavy creature who is burdened or symbolically weighed down by her work. There is no contrasting imagery of lightness, which makes the short poem seem even heavier. Because one of the focal points or motifs of the poem is a shoe, the reader's attention is drawn to the ground. Similarly, the setting is on the street and the reader's eye is also...
Being continually drawn to the ground and the woman's shoe makes "Proletarian Portrait" have a heavy feeling.
William Carlos Williams comments on the brutal persistence of patriarchy in "The Raper from Passenack." The title immediately conjures the imagery of rape, and the title fuses into the first line of the poem. "The Raper from Passenack" is written in a narrative format, describing a scene in which the titular character is driving home the nameless girl who he just violated. Most of the narrative takes place inside the
William Carlos Williams' "Pastoral" and "Proletarian Portrait" William Carlos Williams' poem "Pastoral" is narrated in an introspective, confessional voice that describes the narrator's attitude toward the streets in which he was raised. There is very little plot in the poem, and it consists mainly of details concerning the street locale. Given the minimal plot that occurs, the details assume great significance. The reader must therefore be cognizant of how the details
E.E. cummings's "she being Brand/-new" appears to be, at its surface, a poem about a man taking his car for a spin and learning the nuances of his new vehicle. The imagery and descriptions cummings uses allows the reader to understand the various things that need to be broken in. The poem's narrator freely admits the car was "consequently a little stiff," which can be further seen in how the
Force: Symbolic rape in William Carlos William's short story William Carlos William's "The Use of Force" is a strange, uncomfortable short story to read about a seemingly very simple subject. A doctor is trying to force a resistant young girl to open her mouth so he can see if she has diphtheria. The girl, not knowing the doctor is trying to help her, bravely but foolishly resists him and he must
684). Arguably the first line in which Williams introduces an aesthetic sensation, "glazed with rain water" lends itself to a bit of a play on words. Water is redundant after the word rain, but rain modifies water as well. Easterbrook writes of Williams as being a poet unique in his ability to "present imagistic pictures." The whole poem "The Red Wheelbarrow," the title itself, and the line "glazed with rain
Tract" by William Carlos Williams Throughout the poem, Williams uses free verse, which results in "Tract" reading more like prose than traditional poetry. This is one of the main concerns Williams an other modern poets had with creating their work. They were concerned with creating new forms of creating art an poetry. A sense of poetic evolution is at the heart of this type of art. In his essay, William
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