erinc09’s Blog

In a town like Spoon River where things seem to move a lot slower than in a bustling city it can be easy to be sucked into a strict routine. Since there is not as much chaos or spontaneity there is not a lot that can switch up your schedule or provide more exciting opportunities. On page 59 I came across a character that seemed to be a victim of this problem. His name was Eugene Carman. His life story was that all he did for over twenty years was work in a store for 14 hours a day and for 313 days a year “saying ‘yes’m’ and ‘yes, sir’ and ‘thank you’ a thousand times a day, and all for fifty dollars a month.” (59). Then one day while getting ready for work he sees himself in the mirror and the only thing he notices is his gray hair and old face. It’s sad that he didn’t realize how he had wasted his life on one single routine until he was so old, and to the point where it was too late to change the course of his life. He was stuck in this town and in this pattern. It is no wonder to me why the character Archibald Higbie (on page 90) loathed Spoon River so much. He felt like it didn’t have enough culture for him to learn from and stopped him from developing a greater sense of the world.

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