Ox Cart Man

Throughout “Ox Cart Man,” Hall maintains a distant, yet quietly admiring tone for his character. The poem opens in the month of October and simply recounts the repetitive, almost ritualistic actions of the man as he prepares to bring his wares to market:

He counts potatoes dug from the brown field,

counting the seed, counting

the cellar’s portion out,

and bags the rest on the cart’s floor (Lines 2-5).

These lines capture the methodical nature of the man, and in a few simple phrases, tell the reader about his life and values. He must discern what to use to continue his planting cycle in the spring, how much to keep for himself to eat, and what to sell. Hall’s repetition of the word “count” (Lines 2, 3) underscores the dull ordinariness of this action; it is something the man has done for many years and will continue to do for many more.

The second stanza delves deeper into the man’s actions and provides a glimpse into the work he does in the other seasons of the year:

He packs wool sheared in April, honey

in combs, linen, leather

tanned from deerhide,

and vinegar in a barrel

hooped by hand at the forge’s fire (Lines 6-10).

Hall’s syntax, line breaks, and sound texture create a slow rhythm, encouraging the reader to linger over each image and consider the breadth of work it represents. The man has labored over the entire course of the year, and now packs the fruits of this labor in the cart. The reader learns that in addition to farming vegetables, he shears sheep and keeps beehives, weaves linen from flax, and tans the hide of deer he presumably hunted. Not only does he make vinegar, but also coopers the barrel in which he keeps it. The stanza creates a picture of complete resilience and self-sufficiency, revealing a man deeply invested in the land and nature, and knowledgeable about extracting resources from it.

The man begins his walk to the market in the third stanza. Hall bluntly states this journey will take ten days, and rather than riding in the cart, which is likely too full to accommodate him anyways, the man walks peacefully “by his ox’s head” (Line 11), together and in a kind of natural communion with the animal. When he arrives at Portsmouth Market, he

sells potatoes,

and the bag that carried potatoes,

flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose

feathers, yarn (Lines 12-15).

Hall once more employs a list to clearly and simply show the man’s life, work, and values. The list once more expands the reader’s sense of the man’s toil, adding on new crops like flaxseed, and new skills, like the construction of birch brooms, the boiling of sugar maple sap into maple sugar, the spinning of yarn, and the pragmatic and frugal gathering of goose feathers to sell. He sells not just the potatoes, but even the sacks the potatoes came in, suggesting both an understanding of the crop and detachment from material things.

Eventually, the man sells out of his goods:

When the cart is empty he sells the cart.

When the card is sold he sells the ox,

harness and yoke, and walks

home, his pockets heavy

with the year’s coin for salt and taxes (Lines 16-20).

The use of anaphora, or the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of a sentence, creates a matter-of-fact tone that characterizes the man’s pragmatism. Hall breaks down all the things that remain for the man to sell off, from the cart down to the animal and its harness—freeing him of everything. All the fruits of his labor have transformed into “the year’s coin for salt and taxes” (Lines 20), suggesting that the earth and natural world participate in and produce wealth, and that the man is, despite his solitude and the lack of any other humans in the poem, a part of a larger community of people and dependent on money. Like a good citizen, he pays his taxes. Notably, he needs the money to purchase salt, an elemental mineral necessary to life; he is not entirely self-sufficient, he must engage with the community and market in order to survive.

In the final stanza, the man has returned home, and now sits “by fire’s light in November cold” (Line 21). The new month suggests a new season, and the simple image of the hearth conveys a sense of comfort and warmth. Back at home, the man

stitches new harness

for next year’s ox in the barn,

and carves the yoke, and saws the planks

building the cart again (Lines 22-25).

The final image shows a satisfied man, but the image is not wholly optimistic: He is still alone, in front of the fire. He looks forward to the changing seasons, but understands the banality that comes with this seasonality and repetition. Ultimately, the poem provides a quiet, admiring image of a rural, New Hampshire laborer, while also, in its simplicity, suggesting a more complicated figure, one who experiences the joys of a completed season of work and the burden of this kind of physical labor and stress.