Grant Wood American Gothic Analysis

Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic shows a couple outside of their farm house posing for a painting. While the husband is staring back at you it is clear that the wife has other things on her mind. At first glance it looks as if she is giving her husband a scorned look, however after closer observations it appears as if she is looking at something off in the distance. When looking at the painting it is easy to see that the artist used geometric shapes as well as vertical lines to visual enhance the painting. The vertical lines are prominent in this painting as they are visible on all of the buildings structures and are prominent when looking at the pitchfork that the man is holding. Along with the vertical lines, geometric shapes can be spotted throughout the painting to include the circles on the wife’s dress, the shapes that are present on the gothic style window on the top floor, and the triangles that are seen on the trim of the wife’s dress and those that are formed by the roofs of the buildings. Although this painting is visual pleasing to the eye of its viewer its true glory is in the story is portrays. Outside of the

While I first thought she was looking at her husband with scornful eyes I later began to think of her as looking off to something in the distance. This was confirmed in Stone’s poem when he writes that “Just outside the frame/ there has to be a dog/ chickens, cows and hay/ and a smokehouse/ where a ham in hickory is also being preserved” (Stone 1-6). This shows that in the distance there is something that could be drawing the wife’s attention away from the painter. What I found interesting about this poem was that while my response focused on the visual aesthetics of the painting the authors response was more based on what was happening in the lives of those in the