Never to be told, Spoon River

The narrators of ‘Spoon River Anthology’ are in a unique position – though dead, yet they are given one last opportunity to speak. But even the dead have their own purposes; whether it be the revealing of a murder (as in ‘Amanda Barker’), anguish at an injustice (‘Doctor Meyers’), or the lasting power of love (‘William and Emily’). The dead must have their say.
One would imagine that being dead would lend itself to objectivity and truth. What need is there for the dead to lie? Throughout the Anthology, however, Edgar Lee Masters makes it abundantly clear that as in life, so in death. Death doesn’t make us honest.
‘Ollie McGee’ is a bitter woman. She would have us believe that her husband, ‘Fletcher McGee’ treated her horribly mean while she was alive so that now, in death, she gains some satisfaction from his continued misery. Though lying in her grave, she is able to somehow observe her husband and relish his decline, noting that he too will soon die. This, she says, is her revenge.
Should we have any sympathy for ‘Ollie McGee’? Certainly, she feels she is entitled to our understanding and acceptance. The rhetorical question – though one suspects that Ollie expects an answer – assumes that we will see Fletcher just as she sees him. She does not describe Fletcher’s “downcast eyes and haggard face” to elicit our sympathy for him; she mentions them only as identifying features, so we will know of whom she speaks. Ollie pulls us into her version of events and takes our understanding and acceptance for granted. She is, in her mind, the wronged woman, after all.
Her words belie her motives, though. ‘Ollie McGee’ is not to be satisfied with merely her husband’s guilty conscience wearing him down to that he, too, will soon lie in his grave. Her motives are far more complex than simple revenge.
In this poem and the next, ‘spoken’ by her husband, we have the picture of a marriage made in misery. Whatever brought these two people together led only to their mutual destruction. Whether or not they were ever really in love both live out Anais Nin’s observation: “Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.” ‘Ollie McGee’ now lies in her grave ‘watching’ her husband’s demise and taking credit upon herself for his imminent sinking into the grave. No more able to find peace in death than in life, Ollie is driven to find solace in the only way her bitterness allows.
Yet, there is the makings of a tragedy here. This bitter woman, who appears to hate her husband, haunting him to his death, lies in her grave, thinking of nothing but the man who ruined her life. More than that, she lies in anticipation of him joining her. Notice that she does not envision ‘Fletcher McGee’ in his own grave. The ultimate goal of her haunting her husband is to drive him “to the place where I lie”. Though Ollie and Fletcher McGee are hardly star-crossed lovers, yet can we hope that, as they lie together in eternity, they will find what eluded them in life?
Ollie is an unreliable narrator, her words revealing something of which she herself might be unaware. She tells us that her husband robbed her of her youth and beauty by “secret cruelty”. Yet the effect of this treatment is to change her physically, causing wrinkles and “yellow teeth”. That which is secret is not usually so visible. Which is not to say that Fletcher did not do what she accuses him of doing, just that there is more to this relationship – as, of course, there is to any relationship – than merely Ollie’s version.
As we will see in the next poem, Ollie had as much an adverse effect upon Fletcher as he had upon her. If his was a secret cruelty, hers would be more vocal. Those ‘yellow teeth’ betoken a foul mouth, a poisonous tongue, a putrid way with words. The kind of mouth that can speak of secrets ‘Never to be told’. Whatever harm he did her with his ‘secret thoughts’, she repaid with her rotten mouth speaking words that shouldn’t be spoken.
Ollie’s version of her marriage is as diseased as her mouth. Fletcher did not destroy her self-respect but her ‘pride’. One of the seven deadly sins, pride stems from an over-zealous belief in oneself, to the exclusion of all others, even God – hence its being a sin. The Hellish punishment for pride is to be broken on a wheel, so it is telling that Ollie describes Fletcher as having ‘broken’ her pride. Her bitterness towards her husband grew out of his refusal to be subject to her pride, to demand from his wife that she not deny him his due as a man and husband. Though she might bemoan her fate, though she might bewail Fletcher’s treatment of her, never does her pride actually break. For, even though she lies in her grave, still is she so sure of her ability to inflict torment upon Fletcher.
As will prove to be a pattern for the poems to come in the Anthology in which characters narrate their interrelatedness to others and their treatment of or from others, so with ‘Ollie McGee’ and ‘Fletcher McGee’ we see that the dead remain true to their living selves. After all they have made each other endure, Ollie still wants Fletcher with her in the place where she lies. She remains too proud to hope that love will drive him to her, so she must haunt him to his death, must finish him as she claims he finished her.
She cannot, however, finish the story. She can never narrate the whole of the story for, either by personal fault or human limitation, she can only know a small part of the whole. This is why Edgar Lee Masters has these mini-sagas spaced throughout the Anthology – a reminder that for all we think we know there are others who know things we don’t. Ultimately, then, the Anthology has a pessimistic view of life, suggesting that if only we talked more, shared more, then we wouldn’t have to wait until death to arrive in the same place – as Ollie hopes for Fletcher to join her in the place where she lies. It’s a futile hope.