The Man With The Hoe

The Man With The Hoe

By Edwin Markham

Written after seeing Millet’s World-Famous Painting

God made man in His own image,
in the image of God made He him.
—Genesis.

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this—
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed—
More filled with signs and portents for the soul—
More fraught with danger to the universe.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched ?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings—
With those who shaped him to the thing he is—
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God
After the silence of the centuries?

Summary of The Man With The Hoe

  • Popularity of “The Man with The Hoe”: Written by Edwin Markham, an American writer and poet, this masterpiece first appeared in 1899 in reaction to a painting by a popular French artist, Jean-Francois Millet, who depicted a peasant doing labor. The poem became an instant hit due to newly industrialized areas in the United States where exploitation by the industrial tycoons was at its peak. It also hit the nerves of laborers and intellectuals alike due to its radical ideas. It presents the poet’s reflection on the painting, due to which it won global popularity.
  • “The Man with The Hoe” As a Representative of Anti-Capitalist Poetry: Finding inspiration from the painting, the poet sets the stage by presenting a biblical epigraph about the creation of man. He presents a man doing labor in the ground with his hoe whom he terms a representative of the generation of laborers doing the harvest for the entire society. The depiction of the man forces the poet to shower a barrage of rhetorical questions about his situation, condition, work, God’s hand in his creation, and his pitiable condition, to argue that society’s greed has marred the innocence and humanity of the human soul such as of this man.
    The poet then compares him with angels to comment on his intellectual backwardness. His pathetic physical condition forces the poet to use highly agonizing images to show that this social failure emerging in the shape of man demands social justice. The poet, then, appeals to the privileged, asking them to perform their social responsibility of providing justice to such people or face accountability before God. He seeks their response through a series of rhetorical questions.
  • Major Themes in “The Man with The Hoe”: Ravages of fast industrialization, the greed of capitalism, and the exploitation of workers is the main theme of the poem. The poet emphasizes this ruination caused by industrialization through the image of the man doing hard work with a hoe, saying that the world has put so much burden on his shoulders that he is now dead to the raptures, despair, and grieving. He is no longer a working man but a statue who has nothing to do with dreams, religion, intellectual rigor, or philosophy. This is the greed of the capitalistic society that the working man has become a pawn in the hands of the rulers, masters, governments, and lords of the world for whom his future is nothing, and his exploitation for their profits continues unabetted. The answer to his situation has become rather a “brute question” that could shake the world, but nothing happens, and the man continues working in the fields.

Analysis of Literary Devices Used in The Man with The Hoe

Edwin Markham uses literary devices to enhance the impact of his poem. Some of the major literary devices he uses in this poem are as follows.

  1. Anaphora: It means the repetition of a word or phrase or clause in the beginning of successive verses to stress upon the idea. The poet used “Whose, To” and “More” as examples of anaphora.
  2. Allusions: It means to give reference to historical, literary, and social significance to stress upon the main theme. The poem shows the use of various allusions such as religious ones by referring to Genesis, God, Lord, and Eternity. There are Grecian allusions, such as of Socrates and Pleiades.
  3. Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line, such as the sound of /e/ in “Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans” and the sound of /o/ in “To have dominion over sea and land.”
  4. Alliteration: Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line in quick succession, such as the sound of /t/ in “Time’s tragedy.”
  5. Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line, such as the sound of /m/ and /r/ in “Who made him dead to rapture and despair” and the sound of /s/ in “To trace the stars and search the heavens for power.”
  6. Epigraph: It means a device used to give a reference in the beginning of the work based on its main theme. The poem uses the epigraph of verses from Genesis as given in the beginning.
  7. Imagery: Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses. Edwin Markham used imagery in this poem such as “To trace the stars and search the heavens for power’ worth of distance run”, “More fraught with danger to the universe” and “More filled with signs and portents for the soul.”
  8. Irony: It means to the contradictory meanings of the words used in different contexts. The poem is full of irony, such as in these verses;

Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land.
Or in the epigraph taken from Genesis that God has created man in his own image, but they are exploiting their own brethren.

  1. Metaphor: It is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between objects different in nature. The poet used different metaphors “weight of the centuries” used for the age of the old man and “burden of the world” used for the products that the old man gets from the fields.
  2. Rhetorical Question: It means to use or frame questions not to elicit answers but to emphasize the main idea. The poem shows the use of several rhetorical questions, such as given below.

Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

  1. Symbolism: Symbolism is using symbols to signify ideas and qualities, giving them symbolic meanings that are different from the literal meanings. The poem shows symbols such as a hoe, dreams, heaven, hell, and rulers to show the exploitation of the workers and their consequences for society and the rulers.

Analysis of Poetic Devices Used in The Man with The Hoe

Poetic and literary devices are the same, but a few are used only in poetry. Here is an analysis of some of the poetic devices used in this poem.

  1. Diction: It means the type of language. The poem shows very good use of formal and poetic diction.
  2. Blank Verse: It means to use iambic pentameter in the metrical pattern. The poem shows the use of blank verse in unrhyme iambic pentameter.
  3. Stanza: A stanza is a poetic form of some lines. There are four stanzas in this poem, with each comprising a different number of verses.
  4. Tone: It means the voice of the text. The poem shows highly ironic tones that become tragic in the first stanza, religious in the third, and moralistic in the last one.

Quotes to be Used

The following lines are useful to quote when making the rulers realize the gravity of the situation over greed, profiteering, and exploitation.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings—
With those who shaped him to the thing he is—
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God
After the silence of the centuries?