Deconstructive Analysis of Ezra Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro' and William Carlos Williams's 'The Red Wheelbarrow'

Deconstructive Analysis of Ezra Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro' and William Carlos Williams's 'The Red Wheelbarrow'

This task was given by Dr Dilip sir Barad. It's a it's about the how do deconstruction criticism to over point of view. For further information have link Click here

Poem 1: Deconstruction in Literature Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare 

This video reflects on the practice of deconstruction in literature, especially drawing from Jacques Derrida’s key ideas and how they apply to poetry. The speaker highlights the fluid and unstable nature of language, arguing that meaning in literature is never fixed but always in flux. Derrida’s concept of “free play” is central words do not point to one stable truth but interact in complex, often contradictory ways.

Using examples like Shakespeare’s sonnets, the speaker shows how poetry frequently contains hidden contradictions: it might claim to avoid themes like love or beauty, yet still evoke them through metaphor, rhythm, and tone. This contradiction illustrates how language can’t fully detach from the very structures it tries to question.

The video also addresses how deconstruction challenges binary oppositions like nature vs. civilization or center vs. margin and draws attention to what is usually silenced or marginalized. Today, poetry often focuses more on the self than nature, reflecting how literature is shifting toward themes of identity and subjectivity. Overall, deconstructive reading invites us to look beneath the surface and recognize how meaning is constructed, destabilized, and reshaped through language.

Poem 2: Ezra Pound’s In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Analysis

Ezra Pound’s two-line poem creates meaning not through description but through juxtaposition. The images faces in a crowd, petals on a bough are connected more by emotion than logic. The term “apparition” gives a ghostly, fleeting quality to the urban scene, while the natural image of petals offers contrast and delicacy. This contrast between the mechanical world of the city and the organic world of nature blurs boundaries between presence and absence, noise and silence. Instead of providing a singular interpretation, the poem invites many, suggesting that meaning arises from relationships between words, not fixed definitions.

Poem 3: William Carlos Williams’s The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

Analysis

At first, this poem seems to offer a simple, realistic image. But a closer reading reveals that the objects a wheelbarrow, rainwater, chickens may not represent reality as much as they suggest it. The imagery is too clean, too idealized, almost like something from a picture book. There’s no mention of mud, mess, or motion. This minimalism draws attention to how language shapes perception. What “depends” on the wheelbarrow is never defined, and the poem subtly questions whether we’re seeing the world or a linguistic construction of it. Its meaning lies in our interpretation, not in the objects themselves.

Poem 4: Dylan Thomas’s A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London

Never until the mankind making

Bird beast and flower

Fathering and all humbling darkness

Tells with silence the last light breaking

And the still hour

Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

     

And I must enter again the round

Zion of the water bead

And the synagogue of the ear of corn

Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound

Or sow my salt seed

In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

     

The majesty and burning of the child's death.

I shall not murder

The mankind of her going with a grave truth

Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath

With any further

Elegy of innocence and youth.

     

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,

Robed in the long friends,

The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,

Secret by the unmourning water

Of the riding Thames.

After the first death, there is no other.

Analysis

This powerful poem challenges conventional expressions of grief. A deconstructive reading can be applied in three stages verbal, textual, and linguistic.

Verbal Stage:

The final line “After the first death, there is no other” contradicts itself. The word “first” implies that more deaths could follow, yet the poet claims otherwise. Phrases like “Never until” also reveal inner conflict: they suggest a beginning but are paired with negation. These contradictions point to the instability of language and how meaning can collapse in on itself.

Textual Stage:

Instead of a linear narrative, the poem jumps between vast, timeless imagery and personal grief. It begins with abstract, mythical language “mankind making,” “all humbling darkness” then moves to the specific loss of a child. The last stanza shifts again, focusing on historical and symbolic imagery of London. These changes in tone and time expose gaps in the narrative, preventing a clear, unified meaning. The poem refuses to provide a complete explanation of the child’s identity or the speaker’s emotional stance.

Linguistic Stage:

Though the speaker insists he will not mourn in traditional ways, the poem is itself a form of mourning. It uses solemn, almost sacred language “London’s daughter,” “robed in the long friends” to honor the child. The poet tries to avoid conventional elegy, but still falls into poetic rituals of grief. This reveals the limits of language: even when we try to resist meaning, we often reproduce it. The poem critiques the very structures it participates in, showing how meaning is always unstable and dependent on language.

References

1. Belsey, Catherine. “Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction.” Oxford University Press eBooks, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198859963.001.0001. 

2.Barad, Dilip. "How to Deconstruct a Text." Bhavngar: DoE-MKBU YouTube Channel, 23 July 2023. 3 7 2024 <https://youtu.be/JDWDIEpgMGI?si=WnmtixfH9lFYj-bJ>.

3.Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. First South Asian Edition 2007. Manchester, Chennai: Manchester University Press, 2007.