The Spoon River Anthology Analysis

Everyone dies eventually, but what would happen if the dead could impart their final words of advice in the form of poetry? What would their lives tell us about the basics concepts of human existence: death, revenge, regret, and love? Edgar Masters attempts to answer these questions in his short book of poetry entitled, “The Spoon River Anthology.” Each of his poems is about an individual member of a quaint country town called Spoon River. Don’t be fooled by the Spoon River’s quaint, Christian reputation. The inhabitants of its graveyard reveal the prejudice and sin that permeates the small town. The dead speak about their faults and many tell of their own follies leading to their eventual demise. Louise Smith, George Gray, and Hon Henry are …show more content…
In her epitaph she tells the harrowing story of a lost love that she could not let go. The man in question had been her fiancée for a number of years and left Louise for another woman without warning. Now that she is dead, Louise realizes that she ruined her chances of happiness. She became comfortable with her grief. It was something familiar and she didn’t want to let it go. Like many people today, Louise was too set in her ways to truly understand that she was harming herself and the people who loved her. The anger and resentment that Louise harbored in her soul is described in the poem as being a weed, “Deadly ivy instead of clematis,” she says. Louise smith slept with her enemy by not anticipating the deadly effects of hatred. The way that she let an invasive weed choke out her heart was entirely up to Louise herself, and no one else was responsible. Louise was a foolish girl, but her parting advice to future generations is to let the soul grow with love, and not hatred. Although her life is over, she imparts simple and heartfelt advice within her …show more content…
He loved a woman that hated him. To the woman’s credit, she was only thirty five and he was seventy. Hon Henry made the woman his wife, not realizing that she hated him. He worked his heart out trying to provide for her and fulfill the impractical expectations she had for her husband. “I wore myself to a shadow trying to please her,” Hon admits in his epitaph. It is clear to the reader that Hon would have been happier without the woman. He spent his life serving the enemy. His enemy, the bitterness of his wife, was harder to recognize than guilt or fear. False love blinded Hon and he fell hard for something that didn’t help him to succeed. Hon felt compelled to make his wife happy, but in reality it was foolish to try. She was a woman who would never be happy with her lot in life whether it be gold or straw. As he died, Hon confesses that he was wrong to marry a woman who never loved him

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