THE MAN WITH THE HOE

What is meant by the quotation "what to him / Are Plato and the
swing of Pleiades?" in "The Man...

In this complex stanza, points are being made in reference to a

Biblical allusion to Psalm 8:5: "You have made [humans] a little
lower than the Angels and crowned [humans] with glory and honor"
(Psalm 8:5). To describe laborersas seen by him in the oil
painting "L'homme la houe" (1863) by Jean-Franois Millet
Edwin Markham enlarges the Biblical concept of "a little lower,"
making it a great "gulf" of separation between the laborer and the
angels (seraphim). He assigns "Time's tragedy" to the laborer's
"aching stoop." Dramatizing his point for the learned (non-laborers)
who are reading his poem, he suggests that such stooped, lowly,
"profaned and disinherited" laborers have no strength to consider
the problems Plato poses or the theories he presents; they have no
opportunity to unbend and turn their eyes skyward to contemplate
the meaning of the movement of the starry Pleiades.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!

Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of the Pleiades?

Markham goes on to suggest in the lines following "Pleiades" that

the "dread shape" of the laborer, through whom "the suffering ages
look," does not have the time, strength, or ability to contemplate
the mundane, earthly pleasures of the "peaks of song, / The rift of
dawn, the reddening of the rose." Markham makes the point that
grueling labor reduces humans to being far lower than their God-
given state, reduces them to a state that is deadened to higher
thought and contemplation, to a state that is as stooped as their
physical state:
 Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited.

The larger point that these lines are part of, "what to him / Are Plato
and the swing of the Pleiades?" is that "this dread shape humanity
betrayed"plundered of rightful thought, profaned of rightful place,
disinherited of the the wonders of lifecries out in protest to the
"Powers" that created life. His cries, which are silenced along with
his contemplation of Plato and his wonder at how the summer and
winter "swing" of the rising and setting of the Pleiades cluster, are a
prophecy of retribution for those humans who lower other humans
in this way: "Cries protest to the Powers that made the world, / A
protest that is also prophecy."

What does the bent body of the man with the hoe signify?
In Markham's "The Man with the Hoe," the man is bent over because of
"the weight of the centuries" (line 1) that he bears and because of the
weight of the "the burden of the world" (line 4), which presses down
upon him. This is a homage and a lament for the working man
throughout time, who toiled in the fields or a steel mill, oppressed by the
wealthy few, who have through their greed oppressed working people,
taken away the light and music in their souls, condemning them to long,
grueling days and nights of work, for virtually nothing in return. This
poem is based upon a painting of the same name by Jean-Francois
Millet. The painting portrays a man who is bent over, working a rocky
ground. The plight of the working man has not really changed much
throughout history. In spite of modern features such as minimum wage
and OSHA regulations, many working people are still bent over
metaphorically, if not literally.

What is the meaning of second stanza in "The Man with the Hoe?"
 The meaning of the second stanza of the poem is that the working
person is being treated in an ungodly way--in a way that God never
intended. While God created people to rule over the land and seas, to
search the heavens, and to contemplate eternity, the working person
lives in a way that is degraded and different from God's design for him or
her. While God's dream was to create people as exalted beings, people
live in a way that is worse than how creatures in hell live. The state of the
working person is a living critique of the world's greed and of omens of
bad things to come. In essence, the way working people, such as
farmers, are treated in is direct contradiction to God's design for
them. THE MAN WITH THE HOE

What two classes of people are mentioned in "The Man with the
Hoe"?

"The Man with the Hoe" deals with the conflict between the working
class and the ruling, moneyed class, the "masters, lords and rulers in all
lands" (line 31). Markham provides a very strong...
Asked by user1188328 on March 16, 2016 at 11:35 PM via web
1 educator answer.
THE MAN WITH THE HOE

How can I describe the man with the hoe from the painting?

The painting shows a laborer or farmer in a field, resting for a moment

on his hoe. If you glance at the field behind him, you won't envy the
backbreaking work he has put into his day. I am going to say that he is
not working with your ordinary Home Depot garden hoe, but a solid iron
agricultural tool that very definitely will get heavier as the day
progresses.

But why did Markham pick such an ordinary subject out of the sublime
and majestic that would have delighted the well-to-do visitors of art
galleries? My guess is that it was shocking in the very same way
Gustave Courbet's The Stone Breakers or Burial at Ormans shocked the
fashionable Parisian public. It was a world away from Claude
Monet's Le Bassin d'Argenteuil with its sailboats on a lovely, placid
summer day.

The painter of Man with a hoe wanted, as Courbet wanted, to remind the
self-satisfied public of the millions whose lives made the world turn, and
perhaps motivate them into reforming action.

How does the poet describe the man with the hoe?

The narrator creates sympathy for the man by describing him as

standing "bowed" as he leans on his hoe. The man also has an
emptiness in his gaze and seems to carry a heavy burden on his back.
The narrator then describes the man as being "stolid and stunned" and
compares him to an ox. Again, the man's back is described as being
"slanted." The narrator then mentions the man's ignorance by asking,
"Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?" The man with the
hoe is also described as a "slave to the wheels of labor" and compared
to a "monstrous thing" whose soul has been quenched. The narrator
cries out to God and asks Him to redeem the laborer for all the wrongs
committed against the unfathomable nameless workers who have lived
miserable lives. The narrator then asks what will happen to the kingdoms
and kings when the "dumb Terror" rises in rebellion. Essentially, the man
with the hoe symbolizes the multitudes of oppressed laborers throughout
history who have been taken advantage of by nefarious rulers. They live
miserably, and both their bodies and minds have been worn out by
endless labor.Who is the modern man in "The Man with the Hoe"?

I am assuming that you are asking about Edwin Markham's poem, which
is based on a painting with the same title. The man in the poem is
clearly meant to be a man for all time, representing ancient workers,
workers at the time of the publication of the poem, which was in the late
1890s, and workers to this day.

In the modern world, there are people all over the world, men and
women, who continue to carry "the burden of the world" (line 4), who are
so exhausted by their labor they cannot even feel "rapture or despair"
(line 5), in other words, great joy or sadness. These are people who are
"Plundered, profaned, and disinherited" (line 30), so taken advantage of
by the greedy that they have no lives, no spirit, and no minds, little more
than animals because of how they are treated.

In spite of the fact that in some countries, there are some protections for
workers, due to enlightened management, legislation, or union efforts,
the plight of the working man and woman persists. There are countries
where working people make a few dollars a day and are subject to
dreadful and dangerous working conditions. They have been stripped of
their humanity, too exhausted to go home at the end of the day and
enjoy anything life might have to offer. Even in the United States, many
people have dangerous and dirty jobs that afford them not even a living
wage. And even for those who make a living wage, for example, coal
miners, the weight of the world, which is literally upon them, bows them
down. Migrant workers are a group of people who endure backbreaking
work, as well, and it is likely one can find, right now, a man with a hoe
who is the very kind of person Markham is speaking of. The fact that we
are living in a post-industrial age has not made Markham's man with a
hoe disappear. Lamentably, he is still with us.

Who is responsible for the condition or state of the man with the
hoe?

"The Man with the Hoe" by Edwin Markham was triggered by a painting of the same name, by
Jean-Francois Millet, and I have included a link to the painting, so you can see what a vivid
representation of the painting this poem is. However, the poem has far deeper meaning than as a
description of the painting.

The man with the hoe represents all the working men who have been burdened, abused, and
misused by the power and greed of the wealthy, over thousands of years, from serfs working for
lords, to tenant farmers, to migrant workers, to factory workers today. There are several
references to show us who is responsible in the poem. The poem refers to "the world's blind
greed" (line 19), the working man a protest "to the Powers that made the world" (line 31), the
"masters, lords and rulers in all lands" (33).
The poem is not a representation of the nobility in work, which the wealthy and powerful would
have us believe should be sufficient, but rather, shows us that work such as men like this have
endured has stolen their souls, taken all the joy out of life, and rendered them no better than
animals. The poem's descriptions of the man's deprivations are a cry for a change in these
conditions. These "Powers" have blown out "the light within this brain" (line 10), made him "a
brother to the ox" (line 7), and created "a monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched" (line
34).

This is a poem that does not celebrate the working man, but that exhorts those in power to create
working conditions that do not steal the working man's humanity and joy, that will not render
him little more than an animal, a plea for better working conditions, better pay, time to cherish
what is good in life, else man is little more than an animal, utterly burdened by the powers that
be.

To whom is the poem "The Man with the Hoe" addressed?

The Man With the Hoe has two audiences, and throughout the poem
poet Edwin Markham shifts smoothly from one to the other.

The first audience is anyone, or more specifically, anyone who is walking

through the museum where the painting hangs. You might imagine an
informed viewer or a professional museum scholar guiding you want to
look at in the painting.

The second audience is much more specific and political. Markham

explicitly indicates this audience near the end of the poem in this line: O
masters, lords and rulers in all lands The poem is addressing the
political leaders of the world. Markham is prompting at least reflection
and political awareness through this poem, and perhaps political change.
He comes close to threatening these leaders with violence as the future
or this voiceless workerjudges them for how they have treated the
workers of the world.

What is the image of the man with a hoe?

Jean-Franois Millets painting, Man With a Hoe, depicts an exhausted peasant man working in a
field. It was meant to highlight the plight of the working class and was considered very
controversial at the time. Inspired by this painting, Edwin Markham wrote the poem The Man
with the Hoe. Markhams poem describes a hopeless laborer who is treated more like a beast
than a human being.

Markham depicts a man in his poem "The Man with the Hoe" who works the land in an
exhausted state--so exhausted, in fact, that he is "brother to the ox." The man at the center of
Markham's poem lives much the way a beast of burden would, as he is constantly working and
never able to take time to think or to ponder the marvels of the universe.

Markham was inspired to write the poem by the painting L'homme la houe by Jean-Franois
Millet. This painting, painted in 1860-1862, was controversial when it was shown at the Salon of
1863. It was considered too socialist in its message. The image is of a man whose facial features
have been blotted out, obscuring his individuality. Wearing a loose-fitting white tunic, he leans
against his hoe in a posture indicating exhaustion. He is working the desiccated land, which is
rocky and infertile. The land is brown, and nothing green is growing. In the background, brush
fires smolder, suggesting a land that is dried up and unable to yield crops.

What two classes of people are mentioned in the poem?

Edwin Markham's poem "The Man with the Hoe" the two social classes
of people mentioned are the labor class and the land-owning/ruling
class.

The central conceit of the poem is that the man depicted with a hoe has
been reduced to an unthinking, unreflective animal state that is far
removed from his natural or intended noble state as a human being. The
farm laborer is called the "Slave of the wheel of labor" in the poem.

"What gulfs between him and the seraphim!"

The distance between the agricultural laborer working as "a brother to

the ox" and the angels of his higher nature is attributable to "the worlds
blind greed," which is represented by the wealthy class that exploits the
laborer.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,

Is this the handiwork you give to God,

This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?

The labor class is shown to be reduced to an unnaturally low state of

spiritual and political being and the ruling class is shown to be immorally
willing to create and perpetuate this indignity.

The poem's distinction between these two classes of people is highly

political and the poem espouses an inevitable revolution that will correct
for the loss of the laborer's dignity. The labor that is said to be
responsible for making kings and kingdoms into the glorious things that
they have become and one day that labor will rise up and overturn a
corrupt world order. The poem implies that this is true because the status
quo -- a situation of disparity and exploitation -- robs one class of its
divinely endowed dignity and this unnatural state of affairs is bound to
come to an end.

What is the difference between Edwin Markham's poem "The Man

with the Hoe" and Shakespeare's...

Both Edwin Markham's poem "The Man with the Hoe" and
Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 speak of mankind's agony when he is in a
state of suffering and strife. Yet, one difference is that Markham's poem
speaks more fluently on the state of being enslaved to labor, possibly
even literally of the state of slavery, whereas Shakespeare's poem only
speaks of having an impoverished fate. It also ends on a happier note.

Though he grew up in a free state, Charles Edwin Anson Markham was

born in 1852 and grew up during the days of the Civil War and the
failed Reconstruction in the South (1861 - 1865), both of which most
likely significantly influenced him and his interpretation of the famous
painting titled L'homme la houe, by French artist Jean-Franois Millet,
from which he derived inspiration for his poem "The Man with a Hoe,"
written in 1863. In this poem, he describes a man permanently
bentfrom "centuries" of labor and staring at the ground. He describes the
man as no longer having enough humanity in him to either despair his
situation or to feel joy, as we see when the speaker asks, "Who made
him dead to rapture and despair ...?" The possibility that the man with
the hoe can be interpreted as being a slave is seen in the use of the
word slave in the phrase "Slave of the wheel of labor" and in the
reference to "masters, lords and rulers." He even goes so far as to
question how a master will ever make human again a shape so distorted
and restore to it its image of God, supposed to be present in all men,
which can be interpreted as references to Reconstruction in the
South, attempts to matriculate freed slaves into society as whole and
free men, attempts that failed significantly due to persistent Southern
corruption. Hence, all in all, Markham's poem looks at humanity
suffering under severe and strenuous labor and questions the ability
for such people to still maintain their humanity while also showing that
restoring such humanity is both nearly impossible and absolutely
essential.

Similarly, Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 describes the speaker as being in

an "outcast state," like a slave, and being "in disgrace with fortune,"
which can be interpreted to mean impoverished, similar to a slave or to
any human who suffers from poverty. Hence, one differencebetween
Markham's and Shakespeare's poems is that Markham's poem speaks
of slavery more directly, whereas Shakespeare's poem only references
any troubled, impoverished soul who feels like an outcast from
society. A second difference is that Shakespeare's speaker has the
fortune of feeling uplifted from his wretched state whenever he thinks of
the person he loves, as seen in the last six lines, making it a happier
poem overall.What does the bent body of the man with the hoe
signify?

The bent body of the man with the hoe signifies that he is one of a
multitude who have labored beyond their strength to support the whims
and desires of 'masters, lords and rulers in all lands.' He... The bent body
of the man with the hoe signifies that he is one of a multitude who have
labored beyond their strength to support the whims and desires of
'masters, lords and rulers in all lands.'

He is described as 'Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox.' His labors

have been appropriated to sustain the 'world's blind greed.' His back is
'bowed by the weight of centuries,' signifying that he represents all the
multitude of burdened, impoverished farmers whose sweat is
 emblematic of suffering and degradation. The man with the hoe is a
'Slave of the wheel of labor.' The wheel here symbolizes never-ending
servitude. Indeed, the poet asks in anguished tones how the world will
ever right the wrongs it has inflicted on 'This monstrous thing, distorted
and soul-quenched' and unable to comprehend 'light' nor 'immortality.'

What is a paraphrase, in the form of a summary question, of each

stanza of "The Man with the Hoe"...

Edwin Markham's poem "The Man with the Hoe" was inspired by the
painting L'homme la Houe by Jean-Franois Millet, which depicts just
what the title says: a man with a hoe. But of course it is...
THE MAN WITH THE HOE

Why is the laborer's protest also a prophecy? What characteristic is

an ox known for? What is the...

The tone of the poem is angry and challenging. It appears to me to be

lashing out at God and the world for what they have done to the working
people. It says that the working people have been... The tone of the
poem is angry and challenging. It appears to me to be lashing out at
God and the world for what they have done to the working people.
THE MAN WITH THE HOE

What type of poetry is "The Man with the Hoe" by Edwin Markham?

"The Man with the Hoe" is a poem of social protest. It describes a poor
man who is digging with a hoe. The poet describes how this man has
been working so hard and for so long that his emotions...
Asked by ishenishan on January 23, 2010 at 10:05 AM via web
3 educator answers.
THE MAN WITH THE HOE

What is the theme of the poem "The man with the Hoe?"
 Edwin Markham's (1852-1940) "The Man With the Hoe" is a famous
poem inspired by the painting L'homme la houe by Jean Francois
Millet (1814-1875). It was first read in public at a New Year's Eve...
Asked by nervin on January 17, 2010 at 6:11 PM via web
THE MAN WITH THE HOE

What is a summary of the poem "The Man with a Hoe" by Edwin

Markham?

"The Man with a Hoe" is an impassioned protest and lament on behalf of

those in servitude, which gives voice, through one symbolic laborer, to
the description of what workers become when yoked to...
Asked by emorocker on December 31, 2009 at 3:48 PM via web
1 educator answer.
THE MAN WITH THE HOE

Can you give me a summary of "The Man with a Hoe"?

The poet, Edwin Markham, describes the physical, intellectual and

spiritual state of people, symbolized by the man in Millet's oil painting
L'homme la houe, who are forced into life-long arduous...
The poet, Edwin Markham, describes the physical, intellectual and
spiritual state of people, symbolized by the man in Millet's oil
painting L'homme la houe, who are forced into life-long arduous labor.
He then predicts the upcoming doom of retribution and asks "Who" is
responsible and how they will answer the "brute question" of "Why?"
when it is asked by this "Man."

Markham describes the man with the hoe as being bent with centuries of
"weight" that has made his face "empty," his jaw slack, his aspect like an
"ox," his brain lightless, a cold ember. He says that God made
humankind to have power and knowledge and to "feel the passion of
Eternity," but this "man" is far from being the "dream" God dreamed in
creation, a Biblical allusion to the Genesis creation account. This "man"
has become the most fearful "shape" among the demons and the most
powerful "shape" (terrible has double meanings, fearful and powerful).
His cries against "blind greed" and will one day bring "danger to the
universe."

In a Biblical allusion to Psalm 8:5, "a little lower than the angels," the
poet says this "man" has been beaten so far down that the distance
between him and the angels is now a great gulf: he has been so far
removed from his original state that a gulf separates him from his true
being: "You have made [humans] a little lower than the angels and
crowned them with glory and honor" (Psalm 8:5). Unable to contemplate
Plato, to follow the seasons through the cycle of the Pleiades star
cluster, unable to understand musical composition, or to know the
meaning of the dawn or cultivate a "reddening rose," this man with a hoe
has been robbed of "rapture and despair," and, being thus deadened, he
lives never grieving his lot, never hoping for better.

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?

The poet asks "WHO" has done these things to the "dream" God
dreamed and identifies them in an apostrophe as "O master, lords and
rulers in all lands." Earlier identified as those having "blind greed," he
challenges those who have caused the terrible and dread condition
afflicting the "shape" of "profaned" and "disinherited" humanity. He asks
them if they want their legacy to be this "betrayed and plundered"
"shape"--turned into a "monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched"--
when the "shape" they've profaned is the "handiwork" God dreamed.
The poet asks how they can touch the burdened, bent, soulless shape
and imbue it again with the immortality of being human, with a living
soul. He asks how they can rebuild the dream and make right the
infamies, the wrongs and woes.

He finally asks how the "future" will justify what's been done to this
powerful "Man": "How will the future reckon with this Man?" (reckon with:
to answer to a powerful person). He asks how the "masters, lords and
rulers" will answer the Man's "brute question," the brute question of
"WHY?" when the prophesied "whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores"
because this "Man," this silenced "Terror," has risen up, broken his
silence, and come to "judge the world."

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?

Images:
What is the theme of the poem "The man with the Hoe?"

Posted on January 17, 2010 at 10:08 PM

Edwin Markham's (1852-1940) "The Man With the Hoe" is a famous poem inspired by the
painting L'homme la houe by Jean Francois Millet (1814-1875). It was first read in public at a
New Year's Eve party in 1898, and published soon afterwards. It portrays the hard labor of
much of humanity using the symbolism of a laborer leaning upon his hoe, over burdened by
his work, but receiving hardly any rest or reward. It has been translated into more than 30
languages.

Edwin Markham himself has explained the theme of his remarkable poem thus:

"The Hoeman is the symbol of betrayed humanity, the Toiler ground down through ages of
oppression, through ages of social injustice. He is the man pushed away from the land by those
who fail to use the land, till at last he has become a serf, with no mind in his muscle and no heart
in his handiwork. He is the man pushed back and shrunken up by the special privileges conferred
upon the Few.

In the Hoeman we see the slow, sure, awful degradation of man through endless, hopeless and
joyless labor. Did I say labor ? Nodrudgery! This man's battle with the world has been too
brutal. He is not going upward in step with the divine music of the world. The motion of his life
has been arrested, if not actually reversed. He is a hulk of humanity, degraded below the level of
the roving savage, who has a step of dignity, a tongue of eloquence. The Hoeman is not a
remnant of prehistoric times; he is not a relic of barbarism. He is the savage of civilization."

The main theme of the poem is that hard physical labor without any reward completely
dehumanizes a person. The following line sums the theme of the poem:

Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?

The farm laborer has been dehumanized and brutalized so much that he has become almost an
"ox!"

What type of poetry is "The Man with the Hoe" by Edwin

Markham?

The poem 'The Man with the Hoe' by Edwin Markham might fit in a few categories, but the one
which seems the strongest and most obvious is 'Protest Poetry.' It helps to understand a little of
the poem's (and the poet's) background. It is said to have been inspired by a painting - one with
which you may be familiar - of an agricultural worker hoeing, by Millet. If not, try to see an
image of it as it will surely add to your understanding of the mood and atmosphere of the poem.
The peom's interpretation of the worker is that of an oppressed servant to a brutal master who
overworks his staff. This is part of a general pattern of exploitation of the poor by the landed rich
which Markham is shouting out about.

Edwin Markham's poem "The Man with the Hoe" was inspired by the
painting L'homme la Houe by Jean-Franois Millet, which depicts just
what the title says: a man with a hoe. But of course it is not just a simple
depiction of a peasant man bent over a rustic farming tool.

The first stanza of the five-stanza poem begins with a brief description of
the man with the hoe:

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.

Then the speaker of the poem asks a series of questions about this
tragic figure, this empty, broken, burdened man. He wonders who killed
the emotions in this man who can no longer feel "rapture" or "despair,"
who is no longer capable of grieving or hoping. In fact, the speaker calls
this man "a brother to the ox," implying that he has been reduced to the
position of an animal; and he wonders who "blew out the light" in this
poor man's brain. A summary question for this stanza: who stole the soul
of this poor man?

In the second stanza of the poem, the speaker again asks the questions
he has after seeing this man with the hoe. He wonders if this is the kind
of man the creator of the universe (God) intended to create. He asks if
this is the man who was created to have "dominion over sea and land,"
the man God dreamed of creating. Then the speaker says of this broken
man that

There is no shape more terrible than this....

A summary question: is this broken man what God envisioned when he
created man to have dominion over the earth?

The third stanza also asks two questions, but the primary focus is on the
distance between this man and the angels. The speaker says this man is
insensible to learning, philosophy, dreaming, and beauty. His humanity
has been "betrayed, / Plundered, profaned and disinherited...." Summary
question: is this the best that man is supposed to be?

The fourth stanza changes directions a bit. Here, instead of addressing

his rhetorical questions to God or the universe, the speaker talks to
those whom he believes created this broken man. His question is an
excellent one, describing both the man's deplorable condition and
questioning their role in creating him:

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,

Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?

The speaker continues his pointed assault on these aristocrats who are
responsible for this broken peasant.

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?

His questions are fair and deserve an answer; however, they are largely
rhetorical simply because these particular men have no apparent interest
in re-making this man, just as they had no qualms about creating him. A
summary question: how will you, who created this "monstrous thing
distorted and soul-quenched" man, give him back his humanity and his
life?
The last stanza is also addressed to those who are responsible for
creating this broken, man, but the speaker goes on to ask what might
happen when the "whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world." This
suggests his belief, or perhaps just his hope, that one day all the broken
men and women will demand change. He also wonders how aristocrats
will answer to God for their actions. Summary question: Are you
prepared to answer for what you have done?