Spoon River Anthropology Poem Analysis

Spoon River Anthropology “Life Is Not Always Easy”

Spoon River, Illinois, a small town where everyone is almost connected in one way or another. It's a town where everyone sort of knows everyone and in this case when something happens or a secret is unfolded the news spreads throughout the town like wildfire. Spoon River Anthropology written by Edgar Lee Masters is a book full of epitaphs that explain a sort of storyline fashion of what goes on in the small town of Spoon River. Many of these poems have to deal with life and even death. They explain the harshness of life which seems to have taken a major toll on the townspeople of Spoon River. The book describes how life sometimes is not always as or as easy as people portray it …show more content…
He was a very talented fiddler and one year at the county fair he fiddled everyday. But, one day he got into a wagon with Butch Weldy and Jack, who were both drunk and they bucked him off and he got caught in the wheel and was killed. He then went up to heaven and there he got to play with all other fiddlers and they listened to the playing of The Fall Of Troy. The story does end on a good note because he is finally sent up to heaven to play with other fiddlers and is put out of his misery of being blind and really almost an outcast on earth. It shows you are able to live only one life because of in the end he does die and is sent up to heaven to be in a better place. I think he really fulfills his life by being able to play among other fiddlers in heaven. This epitaph in depth really shows how life sometimes can’t ever be fair, but in the end all suffering and misery are tossed away and people then are able to finally enjoy themselves because nothing is hindering or stopping …show more content…
He begins to say as if he only had just one more year he would have been able to finish his flying machine and became rich and famous. In the epitaph he says, “Who tried to chisel a dove for me, Made it look more like a chicken. For what is it all but being hatched, And running about the yard, To the day of the block?” I think he is trying to say that he had someone try and construct a dove for him, but instead they made it look more like a chicken and that this image will always be engraved in his headstone and that people will take him for a chicken and a failure. This epitaph expresses the one life by showing that in life you either fail or succeed and that you have to make a decision fast because you will be remembered for success or