BLOG 12: Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar Lee Masters addresses several different things in “Spoon River Anthology” with his different characters that all express Masters’ realism. It is hard to say what his philosophy was because he is putting himself in the position of other people, many based on those he actually knew, so it will have to broken down into the different ideas in different poems. In “Trainor the Druggist”, shows how life is unpredictable. He says: “Only the chemist can tell…what will result from compounding fluids or solids. And who can tell how men and women will interact…” (Masters 19). He dies unmarried because he did not know what the results would be of his reaction with a women, or, in other words, how the child would turn out. In “Alexander Throckmorton” he says that “genius is wisdom and youth”, but wisdom comes with age so it is insurmountable to have both (Masters 125). Then, in “Professor Newcomer”, Masters tells of an engine that was so powerful it overworked itself to death. He compares this engine to humans using all their energies while having “nothing to do” (Masters 133). His “Fiddler Jones” ends with the lines: “I ended up with forty acres… a broken fiddle… a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, and not a single regret” (Masters 61). All of his experiences and memories made him who he is, so he has no regrets.

Thoreau would probably feel the same way as Trainor the druggist because he was left unmarried. Like the druggist, he stuck to his interests or what he knew. Thoreau would not agree with Professor Newcomer though. He says that “a man has not everything to do, but something…”, while Newcomer says man has nothing to do (Thoreau). And, of course, Thoreau wanted to live without regrets because he says so in “Walden.”

Emerson has a somewhat radical stance on what Trainor the druggist says. He probably thought it was possible to predict things the way he relied on intuition and basically says nature put things in certain relations that could be understood, but not by relying on sciences that were not so natural. Trainor is a man who solely relies on science that when he cannot predict what will happen in marriage, he does not get married. Relating to Throckmorton, Emerson admired infancy, which, Brugman explains, is pure and honest.

Brugman, Patricia. "Individual and Society in 'Self-Reliance'." McClinton-Temple, Jennifer ed. Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=&iPin=ETL0377&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 30, 2012)

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Nature." Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. Web. 06 Feb. 2012.

Masters, Edgar Lee. “Spoon River Anthology.” New York: Tom Doherty Associates, Inc., 1996. Print.

Thoreau, Henry David. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - with Annotated Text." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25 Jan. 2012.