Analysis of Indignation Jones
Edgar Lee Masters 1868 (Garnett) – 1950 (Elkins Park)
You would not believe, would you
That I came from good Welsh stock?
That I was purer blooded than the white trash here?
And of more direct lineage than the New Englanders
And Virginians of Spoon River?
You would not believe that I had been to school
And read some books.
You saw me only as a run-down man,
With matted hair and beard
And ragged clothes.
Sometimes a man's life turns into a cancer
From being bruised and continually bruised,
And swells into a purplish mass,
Like growths on stalks of corn.
Here was I, a carpenter, mired in a bog of life
Into which I walked, thinking it was a meadow,
With a slattern for a wife, and poor Minerva, my daughter,
Whom you tormented and drove to death.
So I crept, crept, like a snail through the days
Of my life.
No more you hear my footsteps in the morning,
Resounding on the hollow sidewalk,
Going to the grocery store for a little corn meal
And a nickel's worth of bacon.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJEKLMNOEPQNRSTU |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110111 1111111 111101010111 01101100101100 00101110 11101111111 0111 1111010111 11101 0101 01011101010 11010010001 01010101 111111 1110100100111 01111101101 10110101010110 11100111 1111101101 111 1111110010 01010101 10101001101011 00101110 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 905 |
Words | 176 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 24 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 720 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 174 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 53 sec read
- 128 Views
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