How to Deconstruct a Text : Deconstructive Reading of four Poems by Shakespeare, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and Dylan Thomas

 

This blog is part of a task on how to deconstruct a text. It focuses on the deconstruction of four poems—by William Shakespeare, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Dylan Thomas's "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London."

Deconstruction, a theory developed by Jacques Derrida, helps us examine texts by questioning fixed meanings and exploring how language and interpretation create multiple, often conflicting, understandings.

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Deconstructing Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: Love, Language & Poetic Power

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 seems to praise the beloved’s eternal beauty by comparing them to a summer’s day. But through deconstruction, we uncover deeper contradictions and shifts in focus.

1. Nature vs. the Beloved
   The poet first compares the beloved to summer, but then criticizes summer’s flaws—its heat, rough winds, and fading beauty. Words like “decline” and “fade” suggest that even the beloved, like nature, is not truly immortal.

2. Immortality Depends on Poetry
   The poem claims the beloved won’t die “when in eternal lines to time thou grow’st”. This implies their beauty lasts only because the poet writes about it. So, poetry—not the beloved—is what defies death.

3. Questioning Love & Perfection
   While the poem separates the beloved from summer, both are fleeting. Perhaps the “rough winds” also reflect love’s passionate, imperfect nature. The poem subtly questions the ideal of eternal, flawless love.

4. Poet’s Power & Beauty Standards
   The poet controls the narrative. The beloved is silent, praised only for appearance. Beauty becomes a requirement for remembrance, raising questions: Would the beloved be immortalized if they weren’t beautiful?

   
   

Sonnet 18 may appear to celebrate love and beauty, but deconstruction reveals it truly celebrates poetry itself. The beloved’s immortality is constructed by words, not nature. What seems like a romantic tribute is actually a powerful reflection on language, authorship, and the instability of meaning.

Deconstructing Ezra Pound’s In a Station of the Metro

“The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough.”

1. What the Poem Shows
   At first, it captures a moment: faces in a crowded station become like soft flower petals on a dark tree branch. The image is delicate, dream-like, and ghostly.

2. Real vs. Imagined
   Faces and petals are real things—but here, they’re signifiers. The poem strips away noise, chaos, and motion to give only a haunting image. It turns real people into fragile, fading visions—like ghosts or memories.

3. Binary Oppositions

• Crowd vs. Petals

• Black bough vs. Pale faces

• Life vs. Death
  The poem quietly contrasts hardness and softness, life and decay—without saying it aloud.

4. The Semiotic: Sound Over Sense
   According to Julia Kristeva, poetry moves us through sound and rhythm—not just meaning. The words “crowd” and “bough” softly echo each other. The short, two-line form makes the image more intense—like a flash or a whisper.

5. What the Poem Does
   It doesn't just describe. It transforms. Instead of explaining the crowd, it turns it into an image that feels. That’s where the poem’s real power lies—not in direct meaning, but in sound, image, and emotional impact.

Julia Kristeva’s Idea of “The Semiotic”

Kristeva says there’s a kind of meaning in language that doesn’t come from definitions, but from rhythm, sounds, and patterns — like the way babies babble before learning words. She calls this “the semiotic.” It’s connected with deep human drives, like the desire for pleasure or fear of death.

In poetry, this semiotic part disrupts normal logic and brings out emotional or physical responses that are beyond surface meaning.

Pound’s poem becomes a perfect example of deconstructive reading—where language breaks away from stable meaning and opens up multiple feelings. We don’t just see the crowd—we feel its fleeting beauty, its sadness, its ghost-like presence.

William Carlos Williams’s "The Red Wheelbarrow" 

 Introduction: The Simplicity That Isn’t So Simple

William Carlos Williams’s "The Red Wheelbarrow" is famously short and clear on the surface. It paints an image: “so much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow / glazed with rain / water / beside the white / chickens.” The lines feel calm, rural, even comforting. But deconstruction shows us that this simplicity is deceptive. The poem may not just be about what it describes — it might be questioning how language shapes what we see, feel, and believe.

Objects or Language? Meaning or Imagination?

While the poem mentions real objects — a wheelbarrow, rainwater, chickens — they aren’t physically present. They’re imagined through words. The phrase “so much depends” is deliberately vague. What depends? Who says so? Why? These questions open the poem to multiple meanings. The clean, almost idealized image lacks mess — there’s no mud, no people, no work. Perhaps the scene is not real at all, but filtered through poetic imagination. The red and white colors seem symbolic too: red suggesting urgency or life, white suggesting peace or simplicity. But again, these meanings aren’t fixed.

 Endless Interpretations: No Single Truth

The poem, which appears to celebrate everyday objects, may also be questioning our trust in appearances. Deconstruction reveals binaries — reality vs imagination, presence vs absence, simplicity vs complexity. What if the poem is not peaceful but anxious? What if “so much depends” carries a hidden urgency or even despair? The wheelbarrow could be symbolic, or not. The poem’s meaning shifts with every reader. In the end, deconstruction helps us see that The Red Wheelbarrow has no stable center — it’s not about clarity, but about the free play of meaning.

 

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire ,of a Child in London 

Introduction: Mourning in Refusal — or Mourning in Disguise?

Dylan Thomas’s poem opens with a powerful declaration — a refusal to mourn a child’s death in traditional terms. But deconstruction questions this very act of refusal. It asks: does the poem truly reject mourning, or does it perform mourning while denying it? Deconstruction, rather than interpreting the poem as unified or sincere, begins by noticing tensions, reversals, and contradictions within the language, tone, and structure. What looks solemn and philosophical may instead be fragmented, unstable, and riddled with internal conflict.

Paradoxes, Shifts, and Breaks in the Text

At the verbal level, the poem is filled with self-contradictory phrases. For instance, the final line — “After the first death, there is no other” — undermines itself, since calling something a "first" implies there will be a second. Similarly, combinations like “until” and “never” create logical puzzles. At the textual level, the poem constantly shifts between time frames and tones — moving from cosmic imagery (death and creation on a universal scale) to a more grounded moment of the child's death in London. These breaks destabilize meaning and show no consistent emotional or narrative frame. The speaker also never explains why he refuses to mourn — this omission becomes another site of deconstructive interest.

🌀 Language Fails — Yet the Poem Continues

Finally, on the linguistic level, the poem does what it says it won’t: it mourns while claiming not to mourn. The speaker refuses "grave truth" but uses ceremonial, poetic language to elevate the child into a mythical figure — “London’s daughter,” wrapped in symbolic robes, buried in London clay. Deconstruction shows how language here tries to escape cliché and sentiment but inevitably returns to it. Even in resisting metaphor, the poem creates new ones. Words like “murder,” “unmourning,” and familial metaphors like “mother” and “daughter” suggest the very kinds of symbolic structure the poem tries to avoid. Thus, Thomas’s poem becomes an example of how language resists control, and how meaning slips away even as the poet tries to fix it.

 Conclusion

Deconstruction opens a new lens for reading poetry—not as fixed expressions of truth, but as dynamic, unstable sites of meaning. Whether it’s Shakespeare’s celebration of love, Pound’s haunting imagery, Williams’s simple objects, or Thomas’s refusal to mourn, each poem reveals contradictions, gaps, and shifts that challenge surface interpretations. Instead of finding a single meaning, deconstruction invites us to explore how language resists closure and creates endless possibilities. In doing so, it deepens our understanding of both poetry and the complexities of human thought and expression.

References : 

Barad, Dilip. “Deconstructive Analysis of Ezra Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro' and William Carlos Williams's 'The Red Wheelbarrow.'” Research Gate, 03 July 2024, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381943844_Deconstructive_Analysis_of_Ezra_Pound's_'In_a_Station_of_the_Metro'_and_William_Carlos_Williams's_'The_Red_Wheelbarrow'. Accessed 03 July 2024.

Barad, D. (2023, July 23). How to Deconstruct a Text. Bhavngar, Gujarat, India: DoEMKBU YouTube Channel. Retrieved 7 3, 2024, from https://youtu.be/JDWDIEpgMGI?si=WnmtixfH9lFYj-bJ

Belsey, C. (2002). Poststructuralism (First Indian Edition 2006 ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Pound, E. (1913, April). In a Station of a Metro. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Retrieved 7 3, 2024, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12675/in-astation-of-the-metro

Williams, W. C. (1938). The Red Wheelbarrow. In C. MacGowan (Ed.), The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 1909-1939. New Directions Publishing Corporation. Retrieved 7 3, 2024, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45502/the-red-wheelbarrow