Essay Questions

Explain the structure of the anthology.

The book is composed of 212 short poems, each one telling the story of a different character. All the main characters live in the fictional town called Spoon River and their life story are told through these short poems. The purpose of these poems is to demystify the rural life and the idyllic way of life presented in many previous similar works from the period. The image portrayed here is a rather bleak one but is an extremely realist one.

How is death described in the first poem in the anthology?

The first poem is entitled "The Hill" and functions as an introduction to the whole anthology. Some of the characters which will later appear in the poems are mentioned here and they are all described as sleeping on the hill overlooking the town. Death is described as a deep sleep from which no one can ever wake up. This way of seeing death is a very positive one and has the purpose of making the reader realize that the reader should not be scared by the inevitability of death.

Are all the characters fictional?

Critics have argued that the vast majority of the characters in the poem are inspired by real-life people the narrator knew throughout his life. In the case of some characters, the names have been changed to respect their private life while in other cases the author used their real-life names. In some cases, the author also wrote poems about people whom he did not know but who have great historical importance. One such people is Ann Rutledge, the woman rumored to be Abraham Lincoln's, first love.