I hid me in a corner, Spoon River
Despite his name, Fletcher McGee is no straight arrow. Whatever kind of man Fletcher might have been before his wife, Ollie McGee , took his “life by hours’, when we encounter him in his epitaph, he is a broken man – the arrow has snapped. Where Hod Putt is the very epitome of his name, Fletcher McGee is a weak man who has allowed life to defeat him. Unfortunately, we know nothing of what other factors may have beaten down this rather pathetic figure, for Edgar Lee Masters gives no back-story, either here or in the previous poem ‘spoken’ by Fletcher’s wife. This dearth of detail serves two purposes – one localized, the other universal – one microscopic, the other macroscopic. Fletcher and Ollie McGee are consumed by their hatred; their whole world has become little more than the causing and suffering of mutual pain. As they lie in their graves, wherein one would imagine they should be beyond the petty cares of life, yet they remain fixated on each other - on who did what, on who ...