Spoon River Anthology

Edgar Lee Masters was a poet as well as an attorney during the early of 1900's. As an attorney masters argued several cases before the supreme court and had a very successful law office (Meet). As a poet Masters was not so successful. Poetry overall seemed to ruin be a downer to him his whole life. Coming out of college Masters wanted to be a poet but his father wanted him to be a lawyer. masters endedd up doing both (Meet). After become a successful lawyer Masters decided one day he was tired of it. He left his whole family and moved to New York, marrying another woman. While in New York Masters released many poems but only had one that actually was successful, which was Spoon River Anthology. Spoon River Anthology is a story about a town of people who are now dead and their monologues from death. The excerpt I read in Spoon River Antholofy was about how one Elmer Karr was in an adultrous relation with Mrs. Merrit and killed Mr. Merrit. The first monologue read was Mr. Merrit you describes the small changes he first began to notice about his wife like "AT first I suspected something—She acted so calm and absent-minded. And one day I heard the back door shut As I entered the front, and I saw him slink Back of the smokehouse into the lot And run across the field." (Masters). The husbands account then just describe how he begged for his lfie before he died. Next in the small portion of the story was Mrs. Merrit's account. Her monologue talked mostly about her court case. In the story she says "What could I say to people who thought That a woman of thirty-five was at fault When her lover of nineteen killed her husband? Even though she had said to him over and over, “Go away, Elmer, go far away" (Masters). According to her monologue she knew that when she gave her body to Elmer it was a mistake and she did he best to make the whole thing go away. After her court case she spent the rest of her life in prison. Lastly Elmer Karr's monologue is the most unique. After being convicted and spending 14 years in prison Elmer is welcomed back as a born again Christian. A lot of Spoon River Anthology had some pretty ironic situations in it, I think the story was mostly written to cast different types of people in how they would view their life after they had lived it. The story was pretty cool with how all of the people in the ground seemed to relate to each other. Another cool part was how as I read about people I could not help but to compare them to people I know in my own life and seem to fit the same profile the character in the story does. That is probably why the story has done so well even after all of these years because people see some of themselves and some of their friend in characters.

Master, Edgar Lee. "Spoon Rover Antholoy." Penn State. Penn State. Web. 16 Feb. 2011. .

"Meet Edgar Lee Masters." Glencoe Literature. Comp. Jeffery D. Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw Hill, 2009. 514. Print.