The Epitaph For Fletcher Mcgee Analysis

An epitaph is a poem or short story that is dedicated to someone who is deceased. Edgar Lee Masters’ collection of poems located in the book Spoon River Anthology contains over a hundred epitaphs. Each of these poems is named after a person, but only five poems are named after actual people. Masters would take some names from the constitutions and state papers of Illinois and for other names, he would choose a first name from one person and a surname from another. Each story is unique, but many intertwine with one another; one example of this is the epitaph for Fletcher McGee. The poem, “Fletcher McGee” described a man’s relationship with his wife and how it had changed over time.
The epitaph for Fletcher McGee is about how he had loved his

wife, but then he had begun to abuse her. Although it is not stated in the poem, it can be assumed that Ollie McGee is his wife by similar information in their epitaphs and the same surname. Their relationship is also described in the articles “Spoon River Anthology” and “The Genesis of Spoon River”, which portray Ollie as Fletcher’s spouse. These characters are the only two characters within the poem, as is shown through the pronouns “she” and “my” that are used throughout the poem. Although it is an epitaph for Fletcher McGee, the story within it is about his wife. This is shown in the article “Spoon River Anthology” it states that “placed immediately after “Ollie” the epitaph of Fletcher McGee, her husband, from the fifteenth garland, giving his side of the story”. After reading Ollie’s side of the story, the reader sees Fletcher’s, in which he tells the story from his perspective. This story includes how he had loved his wife, but how after she passed, she had begun to haunt him.
The beginning of the poem shows how much Fletcher had loved his wife. This is shown by how he describes her. Near the beginning of the poem he says “She took the pity from my heart, And made it into smiles” (Masters). This is describing how she had made him happy. He also compared the time to a shadow; shadows are always there, but they are rarely noticed. From this, it can be assumed that time went by unnoticed when he was with her.
Although it is shown in the beginning how much he had loved her, the happy tone it had created soon turned into a more serious tone.

This began when he compared her clay and his secret thoughts to his fingers. He was implying that he was changing her with his secret thoughts. These secret thoughts can be assumed to be abuse by the way he describes her saying his fingers “set the lips, and sagge the cheeks, And drooped the eyes with sorrow” (Masters). Someone with a black eye can be described as having a drooping eye. With this in mind, and the later statement that it was a “face she hated And a face I feared to see” it can be assumed that he was abusing her until she hated to see herself. When he says that it was a face he feared to see, he means that he is resentful of what he had done and she was a constant reminder. This is shown by the final two lines of the poem which state “And then she died and haunted me, And hunted me for life” (Masters). What he had done to her had haunted him after her death and he believed that she was seeking revenge, as is shown through the use of the word “hunting”.
It is known that people can change over time, and this is true for relationships as well. In the case of Fletcher McGee and his wife Ollie, they had a loving relationship that turned into one full of violence and resentment. Although Fletcher says that she had haunted him and hunted him after her death, by dedicating his epitaph to her and his remorse, it does not make the fact that

he had abused her disappear.