Minerva Jones Poem

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The famous poet Edgar Lee Masters, uses a collection of short poems in her work "Spoon River Anthology". The Anthology collectively narrates the epitaphs of the residents of Spoon River, a fictional small town named after the real Spoon River that ran near the author's home town. In one of her numerous short poems called "Minerva Jones", I learned that Minerva is a rape victim. With her heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk, it drew plenty of attention of the people. But it drew too much attention that a man by the name of "Butch" Weldy, took advantage and violated her. She is left with Dr. Meyers, whom helped her with her situation. This shows that the reader believed small town America is a shady and dangerous place. Place where people …show more content…

Meyers is a great and kind hearted man. He helped all the weak, the halt, the improviden, and those who could not pay for his service. Then a woman by the name of "Minerva" came to him, crying. He tried to help her but she died, then after, people in the town were disappointed and angered with Dr. Meyers. This tells me that the society will not look for and credit a person's accomplishements, but instead flock the person's failure. In the epitaph called "Mrs.Meyers", the speaker feels pity for Dr. Meyers, she felt so because he was only trying to help Minerva, yet people blamed him for her sudden death. The speaker is Dr. Meyers' wife. She says, "Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see. That even trying to help her, as he called it, he had broken the law human and divine." I can infer that she was very compassionate with her husband. The society was very mean to him, they villainously told lies about him on the town's newspaper, it really devastated

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