William Carlos Williams wrote the famous poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" more than a hundred years ago, and by a formalist reading of the poem the possible meaning can be unraveled. A formalist approach to the poem reveals the connection between humans and the environment through farming, and a study of some aspects of the era when "The Red Wheelbarrow" was written explains the reason to why the poem was written during the 1920s. By looking at the 1920s as well as analyzing the poem's form, colors and symbolism, a meaning that involves a longing back to a simpler time can be discovered, a time when humans lived closer to nature before the Industrial Revolution. The lost pastoral world found in the poem will also be compared to Leo Marx's cultural history found in The Machine in the Garden.