Edgar Lee Masters’ “‘Indignation’ Jones”

Edgar Lee Masters’ “‘Indignation’ Jones”

In the second poem/epigraph of the “Minerva” series, the poetess’ father, “Indignation” Jones, fulminates against Spoon River society.

Introduction with Text of “‘Indignation’ Jones”

Edgar Lee Masters’ “‘Indignation’ Jones” from Spoon River Anthology gives voice to the father of “Minerva Jones,” the village “poetess.  This father and daughter share two common character flaws:  their arrogance of a mightily, unearned self-worth and their vice of laying the blame for their own erroneous behavior on others. “Indignation” Jones’ blast of a full-throated denouncement of Spoon River society rings as hollow as Minerva’s, even as it is, perhaps, louder.

“Indignation” Jones 

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.

Interpretive Reading: 

Commentary on “Indignation” Jones

In the second poem of the “Minerva” series, the poetess’ father, “Indignation” Jones, offers his indignant rant against Spoon River society.

First Movement:  An Indignant Man

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?

“Indignation” Jones was apparently so bombastic as to carry the moniker “Indignation.”   Clearly, he deems himself superior to the other Spoon River residents as he fashions his claims in question form that reveal that he came from “good Welsh stock” and that his blood was pure—not like the “white trash” in Spoon River.

Additionally, he pronounces himself and his stock’s lineage “more direct” than those from New England and Virginia that now reside in Spoon River. Jones is unlike the riffraff of the town; he asserts that his bloodline is untainted by southern Europeans or other races.

Second Movement:  Unrecognized Erudition

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.

Jones then claims that he has schooling and has book-learning; it was observed in his daughter’s epitaph that she too had some book-learning. But Jones is now taunting the town of Spoon River by accusing it of not believing that he had such erudition.

Jones accuses the town of judging him by his outward appearance; all they saw was a disheveled man with unkempt “hair and beard,” wearing tattered clothing. Apparently, no one ever engaged in conversation with Jones, if his report can be given credence.

Third Movement:  Unmasking Self-Pity

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.

Philosophically, Jones surmises that sometimes men’s lives become ill-fated and diseased, as bad as “a cancer.”  Some men become bruised and continue to experience being bruised.  Because of the bruising, those lives turn into a swollen “purplish mass.”  They appear as nasty as the cancerous growths on cornstalks.

Likening his life to a swollen, purplish mass on a corn stalk reveals Indignation’s own penchant for poetry.  And clearly it unmasks his own self-pity that along with the poetry he has passed on to his daughter Minerva, the village poetess.

Fourth Movement:   A Carpenter, and  Yet

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

The irony of “Indignation” Jones’ situation is enhanced as he reveals that he had been “a carpenter” by trade. But he has nothing more to say about his profession and moves quickly on to asserting his desperation at being mired down in a swamp-like condition his whole life-long.

Jones had innocently entered this swamp, mistaking it for a lovely pasture.  He never tells his audience why he started out so optimistically, or exactly how or when he changed into the grump he now clearly is. He laments that his wife turned out to be “a slattern,” and his “poor Minerva” was “tormented and [driven] to death” by this unfeeling town.  

Jones offers no clear reason for any down turn of luck:  was he a successful carpenter?  why did he marry a slattern in the first place?  was he aware that Minerva underwent an abortion, which, in fact, caused her death?

Answers to these questions obviously would reveal that Jones is the actual cause of his own suffering, and like many of the talking dead here, who constantly place the blame on others for this bad luck, Jones is doing the same.

Fifth Movement:    Depressed and Dejected

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.

Living depressed and dejected, mired in a nasty swamp-like existence, Jones moved “like a snail” through his days. Being stuck in a swamp and having a miserable existence accounts for his life seeming to move so slowly.

But now he can announce that the riffraff can no longer hear his traipsing to the store in the morning to buy what little he could afford, only a “little corn meal” and a few cents’ worth of “bacon.  Consumed by an arrogant self-pity, “Indignation” Jones does not realize the vacuousness of his protestations of poverty.