Ox Cart Man

The cart in “Ox Cart Man” symbolizes the natural cycle of the man’s life and livelihood. The man has gone through the same cycle year after year and has developed a method to make it most efficient and in alignment with the seasons. At the beginning of the poem, the man packs the cart to the brim with all the things he will take to market. However, the man is not precious about the cart or attached to it; instead, “when the cart is empty he sells the cart” (Line 16). He views the cart as a means to get his wares to the market, and once he has sold everything, it is just another item to get rid of, so that he does not have to drag it home. The final lines of the poem show the man as he “saw planks / building the cart again” (Lines 24-25): The man annually rebuilds the cart. Each of these carts does not inherently carry metaphorical weight, but the idea of the cart operates as a part of the man’s yearly cycle of preparation, labor, harvest, and sales.