Spoon River Anthology Literary Analysis

In Spoon River Anthology, readers listen to the many, many voices of Spoon River’s citizens, speaking to us from beyond the grave. Each of them has something to offer about the nature of life, with renewed appreciation found in death. Unsurprisingly, these characters would have many, many different perspectives, with each having different insights and themes, some conflicting, some agreeing. One of these such themes, found in myriad characters—interestingly told through mostly female characters—is that “love leaves much to be desired.” Each of these following characters never found happiness in love or life and died dissatisfied and miserable. One character that finds loves leaves much to be desired is Pauline Barrett. A year after recovering
Her husband—Henry—gets her pregnant knowing that she won’t survive the pregnancy from a prior medical ailment. To the rest of the town, however, Henry is seen as a poor, loving husband who so regrettably lost his wife in childbirth. Amanda wants to make sure that there is no doubt in the reader’s mind that Henry was far from loving; he was exacting, purposeful and deadly—no better, in fact, than a first-degree murderer. Another of the many characters that fall within this theme is Julia Miller, who married a man of sixty-five while she was only thirty. Before this marriage, she had a young lover that abandoned her when she became pregnant.
One morning, dreading the birth of this child she never wanted, she quarrels with the man she married to conceal her previous affair and her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. She thinks over the last letter she ever received from her now-estranged lover before taking a lethal dose of morphine and sits down to read, letting the darkness wash over her as she settles into a quiet, everlasting
Even of all the “musicians, poets, dandied, artists [and] nobles” she met, none can give her peace. After meeting Count Navigato, they travel to Rome—where she is poisoned by this very man and dies. Inscribed on her tomb is a statement of irony, saying that she who was so restless in life now rests eternally.
None of these characters ever found happiness nor even peace in their lives, they spent every moment in unease, suffering, and anguish before one day dying. Of two, they were killed by their partners: Dora Williams and Amanda Barker. Another two killed themselves in their sorrow and regret: Julia Miller and Pauline Barrett. Of the last two, how they died is unclear. All that is sure is that Ollie McGee died before her husband.
For them, love was a lie—a conspiracy—that seemed good on paper but faced in reality didn’t work out well at all—kind of like communism. Even death hardly appeased any of them, only Julia welcomed her death and Dora seemed vaguely yielding, as though it hardly mattered to her one way or another.
For all, their sources of misery were their partners and—if pregnant—the resultant child, too. There was never any sense of love or connection between the characters and their partners; Even when they tried, all they were met with was suffering and