Edgar Lee Masters’ “Harold Arnett” from Spoon River Anthology portrays a character who learns that the duty of facing trials and tribulations does not end with merely leaving the physical world.
First Movement: “I leaned against the mantel, sick, sick”
The speaker begins his dismal report by describing how he “leaned against the mantel, sick, sick.” His mind was on his “failure” about which he never reveals any information. He continues, saying he was “looking into the abysm,” and the hot mid-day heat was making him feel weak.
Second Movement: “A church bell sounded mournfully far away”
Harold then reports that he hears the distant chiming of “a church bell,” and he also hears a baby crying. At first, the reader will take these to be actual sounds that Harold is hearing as he indulges his melancholy at the fireplace.
But then he adds that he hears John Yarnell coughing. Unless John Yarnell is a sick guest in Harold’s home, it is likely that Harold is hearing all of these sounds only in his memory’s ear and not literally.
Harold never clears up any of these vague strands of thought, because they are not the focus of his soliloquy.
Third Movement: “Then the violent voice of my wife”
Harold snaps the reader into the scene when he claims he hears “the violent voice of my wife.” That “violent voice,” the reader later realizes will be the last thing Harold hears, and perhaps its implication for the personality of the wife adds to the motivation of Harold’s own violent act.
That violent voice screeched out to Harold, “Watch out, the potatoes are burning!” Harold then becomes aware of the burning stench and is filled with an “irresistible disgust.”
Fourth Movement: “I pulled the trigger ... blackness ... light”
With the sound of a “violent voice” and the disgusting smell of burning potatoes in his consciousness, Harold “pulled the trigger,” killing himself. Immediately, he sees “blackness . . . light” and feels “unspeakable regret.” He finds himself “fumbling for the world again.”
Harold’s first reaction to having pulled the trigger was to try to unpull it. He regretted his rash act and tried to regain his life.
Fifth Movement: “Too late! Thus I came here”
However, Harold’s “fumbling” fails. He reports, “Too late!” Therefore he says he “came here.” Instead of being taken to his grave, he claims he “came” to it, sounding as if he simply leisurely gave up and walked into death instead of being forced into it.
Harold then focuses on the very physical, human act of “breathing.” When he entered death, he entered with “lungs for breathing,” but the very dreadful truth is that in the grave, or simply in the state beyond life, “one cannot breathe with lungs.”
Harold’s emphasis on lungs and breathing demonstrates the strong connection between breathing and remaining in the physical body. Although his physical body still possessed lungs, they became useless to him in the after-life state, and he is frustrated by that conundrum; he says, “one must breathe.”
Sixth Movement: “Of what use is it”
Harold’s conclusion demonstrates the futility of suicide. Framed as a question, Harold’s final reaction emphasizes that souls cannot escape their karma by ridding themselves of physical bodies. Harold asks, “what use is it,” to leave the world behind, when the soul still continues to be affected by its own “destiny of life.”
Source:
- Edgar Lee Masters, "Harold Arnett," Spoon River Anthology, bartleby.com.
Linda Sue Grimes - As a writer, researcher, and SRF devotee, Linda Sue Grimes has studied poetry and practiced Kriya Yoga for over thirty years..
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