Memory, Community, and Self-comprehension  

in Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology”

 

John Hallwas

 

            In recent weeks I have been preparing to teach an adult-education class, and it’s focused on the theme of memory---the impact of the remembered past on the shaping of our lives---as reflected in American poetry and prose. So, one volume that I’ve been looking through for a few selections is Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology,” an American classic that I’ve enjoyed for decades---and did an annotated edition of in 1992.  

            Of course, it’s a book about small-town folks, buried and speaking from the grave, who reflect on their lives and struggles. So, remembrance is a central theme. Each of the figures is trying to do what we all must do, sooner or later: come to terms with our experience, recognize the forces that have shaped us, reflect on what our life has become. And the individual’s relationship to the community is often crucial.  

            Some of the best “Spoon River Anthology” poems sum up an entire outlook on life, or dramatize someone’s often bitter or disillusioned self-evaluation. One of my favorites, which I have read to audiences in several states when lecturing on the book, is “Eugene Carman.” It’s about a small-town store clerk who worked for an oppressive rich man named Rhodes, and who neglected to break out of that conventional role and assert himself:

            “Rhodes’ slave! Selling shoes and gingham,

            Flour and bacon, overalls, clothing, all day long,

            Fourteen hours a day, for 313 days [a year],

            For more than twenty years,

            Saying ‘Yes’m’ and ‘yes, sir’ and ‘Thank you’

            A thousand times a day—and all for $50 a month.

            Living in this stinking room in the rattle-trap

                    Commercial [hotel],

            And compelled to go to Sunday school, to listen

            To the Rev. Abner Peet 104 times a year

            For more than an hour at a time---

            Because Thomas Rhodes ran the church

            As well as the store and the bank. . . .

            So, while I was tying my necktie that morning

            I suddenly saw myself in the glass [mirror]:

            My hair all gray, my face like a sodden pie;

            So I cursed and cursed, ‘You damned old thing!

            You cowardly dog! You rotten pauper!

            You Rhodes’ slave!’”

            And with that negative self-assessment, he has a stroke and dies---not cursing the oppressive, tight-fisted, uncaring owner who ran much of the town and enforced social conformity, but himself, for allowing his life to be what it was. He was a victim of his own weakness and insecurity.

            Petit, the town poet, is another tragic figure, whose realization about his life comes too late. He sadly missed his chance to be a significant writer, simply because he focused on conventional themes and ignored the complex reality of the community he lived in:

            “Life all around me, here in the village:

            Tragedy, comedy, valor, and truth,

            Courage, constancy, heroism, failure---

            All in the loom and oh, what patterns. . . .

            Blind, to all of it, all my life long.”

            As this monologue so clearly suggests, “Spoon River Anthology” challenges us to do what we should be doing but so often don’t: pay attention to those around us. Look deeper. Sympathize. And recognize that we are often blind, narrow, miss-focused, self-defeating---and therefore alienated and unsatisfied.

            In Masters’ view, when he was writing the book back in 1915, many people didn’t seem to care about others, or their community. There was too much selfishness, materialism, and conformity---too little concern for important values and social commitment. Of course, many people now view those problems as rampant in our own time.

            “Spoon River Anthology” challenges us to see ourselves more clearly, and perhaps ask, “Am I like that too? Focused too intently on myself? Too conventional or intimidated to see, and know, what I should be devoted to?” The poems show people turning to all sorts of things that don’t pan out and don’t make for a happy life: sexual promiscuity, self-righteous judgmentalism, withdrawing into one’s self, and failing to appreciate others, among them.

            The insight that allows those matters to emerge is often keyed to remembrance, which can promote crucial self-comprehension. But for the more troubled townspeople in the “Anthology,” that process doesn’t seem to arise until after they are dead and begin to reflect from the grave on their whole experience. For us, prompted perhaps by this American classic, there is still the opportunity for meaningful self-evaluation and, with some effort to re-shape our lives, more satisfying self-realization.