THE MAN WITH THE HOE

is a poem made by an American poet Edwin Markham. Edwin was born on

born April 23, 1852 in Oregon City, California. In 1899 he gained national
fame with the publication in the San Francisco Examiner of “The Man with the
Hoe.” Inspired by Jean-François Millet’s painting

Jean-François Millet - Millet is a French Artist noted for his paintings of

peasant farmers and can be categorized as part of the Realism art
movement.He was famous for his realistic works such as The Sower and the
Winnower, and of course, the artwork that inspired Edwin Markham to write
his poem. And such artwork was called “L’homme à la houe” which translates
to The Man with the Hoe, the same title as Markham’s poem.

Throughout this piece, the speaker focuses on the depiction of a man from

Millet’s painting L’homme à la houe, or “The Man with the Hoe.”

is a direct, powerful poem in which the poet challenges society’s treatment of

the working class.

The Man with the Hoe is considered part of Ekphrastic poetry which

refers to a poem written about a visual work of art, such as a painting or a
sculpture.

The poem describes a worker whose body and mind have been warped by
endless toil, highlighting the toll that manual labor has taken on this man in
order to emphasize the brutal conditions faced by workers throughout history. 

He focuses on how spiritually exhausted this man seems. He’s lost, without
either hope or sorrow. The world has taken his soul from him, and Markham is
determined to express his outrage. 

Structure and Form

‘The Man with the Hoe’ by Edwin Markham is a four-stanza poem that is
separated into stanzas of different lengths. There are a total of forty-nine lines
in the poem. There is no single rhyme scheme that structures the entire piece,
but there are several different examples of rhyme throughout the poem. It is
written in blank verse, meaning that although it doesn’t rhyme, it does
use iambic pentameter. This means that each line contains five sets of two
beats. The first of these is unstressed while the second is stressed. 

THEMES
labor, equal rights - Through his depiction of the laborer, who represents all
working men and women, he is able to express the horrible unequal treatment
across American society

Analysis, Stanza by Stanza

Stanza One
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? 

This is a dark beginning, one that suggests that this man has been through a
great deal. The man carries a great weight, one that the speaker compares to
the “burden of the world.” This is a more poetic way of saying that the man
with the hoe has the weight of the world on his shoulders.  He wonders how
this man came to be in the state that he’s in. He compares the workingman to
an ox and to a “thing that grieves not and never hopes.” the poet probes the
situation for an answer. He wants to know who’s fault it is that this man’s light
is gone. 

Stanza Two 
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 menace to the universe.

In the second stanza, the questions continue. The speaker asks the listener,
and anyone else who might have an answer, if this man could possibly be the
same noble being that God created to “have dominion over sea and land.“
Through these questions, this speaker is trying to emphasize how inhuman
this man seems. By asking if this is the dream that God dreamed, the speaker
is implying that no, this is not what God intended. The speaker also expresses
his opinion that nowhere in hell could one find a shape worse than this man’s.
He thinks that this man’s spiritual health is a threat to everyone.

Stanza Three 
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 the aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned, and disinherited, 
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world.
A protest that is also a prophecy.
The poet reminds the reader that this man works every day of his life. He has
no time for the words of Plato, nor could he study astronomy. Art, music,
literature, none of it can reach this man’s mind. He is suffering in a way that
puts up a wall between any of life‘s greatest pleasures. This is a classic
argument for the empowerment of the working class.

Stanza Four 
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 all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings — 
With those who shaped him to the thing he is — 
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world.
After the silence of the centuries?
In the long fourth stanza, He asked if this is what God intended. He asked
them to take a look at what they created and analyze if they are themselves
doing God’s will. He asks them how they plan to reverse the damage that
they’ve done. In the final lines, the speaker reiterates his questions. He asks
those listening, the ruling classes, how future men and women will judge what
they’ve done.

Written at a time when workers in the United States had few protections and
rights, the poem boldly critiques of the exploitation of laborers by a capitalistic,
profit-driven society. The speaker is criticizing these circumstances, and
calling on society to treat members of the working class as fellow human
beings with a right to share in the products of their labor. 

Markham’s poem was widely reprinted in newspapers, fueling a national

debate about the treatment of labor in American society and the need for
reform. Accusing the ruling class of moral failure, “The Man with the Hoe” is a
protest poem, part of a tradition of literature concerned with social justice.