Spoon River Anthology Analysis

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The World is Often Not As It Appears
Examples From the Book “Spoon River Anthology”

In the book Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters created the theme “the world is often not as it appears”. Some poems that show this theme are “Mrs. Charles Bliss”, “Nellie Clark”, and “Dora Williams”. Many poems throughout the book are based on this theme, but these three show an easy illustration of it. First, “Mrs. Charles Bliss” was ready for a divorce. She was ready to leave her husband and he was ready to leave her. Reverend Wiley advised her not to for the sake of the children. And Judge Somers told her husband not to go through with it. So they stuck it out even though they hated each other. Two of the children sided with the husband and blamed her for it. The other two sided with her and blamed him for it. This family had to live life hating each other and pointing fingers. To the average person walking down the street, passing by their house might seem normal or even peaceful. But inside the locked doors life wasn't so great. People would have no idea what is going on in there. The next poem that follows the theme “the world is not often as it appears” is “Nellie Clark”. Nellie Clark was raped when she was eight years old. Her father tried to kill the boy who did it. She could not forget what happened to her. Then she …show more content…

She married a lot of men during her life. First, she married a man who was rich, then a man from Paris, Then she married another man from Genoa. They went to Rome and he poisoned her where she died. To the average person it may seem that Dora Williams is just not very good at picking spouses. But she is trying to move on from her first marriage that she hated so badly. Her first husband threw her then ran away. This scared her from finding another man. So she found several that she found out she also didn’t like. Eventually one hated her enough to kill

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