Edgar Lee Masters’ “Benjamin Fraser”

Edgar Lee Masters’ “Benjamin Fraser”

In the epitaph titled “Benjamin Fraser” from Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, the serial rapist/murderer is dramatizing his unsavory character.

Introduction and Text of “Benjamin Fraser”

Edgar Lee Masters has explained that “The Spooniad” is a mock heroic after Alexander Pope’s “The Dunciad.”  The Spooniad offers commentary on each of the Spoon River speakers who hold forth in Spoon River Anthology.

From “The Spooniad” the reader learns that “Benjamin Fraser” was the “son of Benjamin Pantier / By Daisy Fraser,” which resulted in a lethal combination: the Pantiers’ dysfunctional relationship motivated Benjamin Pantier’s bedding the prostitute, Daisy Fraser, who gave birth to the criminally insane Benjamin Fraser.  (See the Pantier sequence beginning with “Benjamin Pantier” and “Mrs. Benjamin Pantier.” )

Benjamin Fraser

Their spirits beat upon mine
 Like the wings of a thousand butterflies.
I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating.
I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes 
Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes,
And when they turned their heads;
And when their garments clung to them, 
Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies. 
Their spirits watched my ecstasy 
With wide looks at starry unconcern.
Their spirits looked upon my torture; 
They drank it as it were the water of life; 
With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes 
The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt, 
Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight.
And they cried to me for life, life, life. 
But in taking life for myself, 
In seizing and crushing their souls, 
As a child crushes grapes and drinks 
From its palms the purple juice,
I came to this wingless void,
Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine, 
Nor the rhythm of life is known.

Interpretive Reading of Benjamin Fraser

Commentary on “Benjamin Fraser”

The epitaph“Benjamin Fraser” from Masters’ Spoon River Anthology allows the serial rapist/murderer to dramatize his unsavory character.

First Movement:   Twisted Imagination

Their spirits beat upon mine
 Like the wings of a thousand butterflies.
I closed my eyes and felt their spirits vibrating.
I closed my eyes, yet I knew when their lashes 
Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes,
And when they turned their heads;
And when their garments clung to them, 
Or fell from them, in exquisite draperies. 

Benjamin Fraser reports that as he murdered and raped his victims their spirits were like butterflies.  Fraser enjoyed the acts of rape and murder intensely and considered the struggle for life of the victims as a play of souls. 

Fraser’s victims’ souls leaving their bodies made the insane criminal think of them as the “wings of a thousand butterflies.”  He reports that he “closed his eyes and felt their spirits vibrating.”  

And even with closed eyes, he knew they were frantically flailing about as “their lashes / Fringed their cheeks from downcast eyes.”  As their heads thrashed from side to side, he could sense that their clothes sometimes “clung to them” and at other times “fell from them, in exquisite draperies.”   In Fraser’s twisted imagination, his act becomes decorated in finery, instead of human despair and blood.

Second Movement:   Appalling Acts

Their spirits looked upon my torture; 
They drank it as it were the water of life; 
With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes 
The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt, 
Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight.
And they cried to me for life, life, life. 

The souls of these women “watched my ecstasy”; he imagines that his victims can discern the joy this perverted individual is experiencing as he rapes and kills them.  He lessens their agony in his own mind by calling their looks “starry unconcern.”  As he admits to torturing them, he converts their response to drinking “the water of life.”

Fraser describes the face of his victim as he squeezes the life out of her: she has “reddened cheeks, brightened eyes”—those eyes would be filled with terror, but he perceives a different image; he visualizes, “The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt.”  His appalling act causes their souls to look all golden and again reminds him of butterflies “drifting suddenly into the sunlight.”  All the while, they are pleading “to me for life, life, life.”

Third Movement:   A Loathsome Criminal

But in taking life for myself, 
In seizing and crushing their souls, 
As a child crushes grapes and drinks 
From its palms the purple juice,
I came to this wingless void,
Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine, 
Nor the rhythm of life is known.

Fraser becomes very vivid as he describes his act of strangulation; he asserts that he crushes their souls—he seizes and crushes them, likening his despicable act to a child smashing grapes to drink the fruit juice from the palm of his hand.

The rapist/murderer cannot bring himself to confess that he is, in fact, squeezing the life out a human being’s physical body.  He does not accept his victim as a human being with personhood. To him they are just disembodied “spirits” that are ripe for his taking, seizing, and crushing.

Benjamin Fraser’s final admission that through taking these lives, he has arrived at his present destination that he describes as a “wingless void,” a place where “neither red, nor gold, nor wine, / Nor the rhythm of life is known,” and he remains as detached as his conscience remained as he committed his loathsome crimes.