Reflection- Spoon River Anthology

For this reflection, we were free to pick whatever excerpts from the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters and compare them to the ideas and philosophies of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  The first excerpt I picked titled "The Unknown" on page 124.  In this poem or passage, or whatever you want to call it, it is about a man (the unknown) who shoots a hawk in the forest.  "Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown/ Who lies here with no stone to mark the place" (Masters 124).  By describing that there is no gravestone where he is buried, it kind of gives the reader supporting information on how the man was considered unknown.  When he shoots the bird, it does not die, but instead it has a broken wing.  The man takes the hawk home and puts it in a cage.  "Daily I search the realms of Hades/ For the soul of the hawk,/ That I may offer him think friendship/ Of one whom life wounded and caged" (Masters 124).  The man talks about how the hawk is very angry at him, and he wants to be friends with him.  If he shot him and broke his wing, why would he go to Hades (I am assuming Hell) to find his soul so they can be friends?  The hawk obviously hates him.  I mean, a strange unknown man ruined his life and threw him in a cage.  Birds are supposed to be free to fly wherever they want!  Surprising enough, I think I found ways to link this to the philosophies of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Neither Thoreau nor Emerson thought that the government should have a huge role in someone's life.  Maybe the man could be considered the government in a sense.  He took away the hawks freedom to fly--the hawk being normal people I guess--and threw him in a cage, and then tried to be friends with him.  Nothing. Makes. Sense.


Masters, Edgar Lee, and John E. Hallwas. Spoon River Anthology. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1992. Print.