Ollie+McGee

"Ollie McGee" Read by Yasmin Photo by confusedvision "I feel cold as razor blade"

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__The Spoon River Anthology,__  by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of narrative poems about people who have died. Ollie McGee, one of the characters in this collection, is a woman who is married to Fletcher McGee, a man who abuses her. She has a painful time with her husband because he describes her as a hunk of sculptor’s clay and wants to make her into what he wants her to be, not who she really is. The abuse eventually leads her to being broken, sensitive, and at the end, vengeful.  Ollie McGee's husband's abuse towards her leads her to being broken because he changed “the face of what [she] was, the face of what he made/[her]” (lines 10-11) Not only is being changed into the person who she is not, but into the person who her husband wants her to be. He also “robbed [her] of [her] youth and/ beauty” (lines 4-5) which means that she thinks as herself as a young and beautiful woman, until he takes that way from her, and “With broken pride and shameful humility, [she] sank into the grave.” (line 7). Unfortunately, with all of the abuse, she can not take it anymore and she passes away.  Because Ollie McGee is being abused, she becomes sensitive and quiet at one point. She is quiet because she asks the reader if he or she has seen a “man with downcast eyes and haggard face,/ that is [her] husband who, by secret cruelty/never to be told, robbed [her] of [her] youth and/ beauty” (lines 2-5) She does not want anyone to know that her husband is taking something away from her. “[His] secret thoughts were fingers:/they flew behind her pensive brow/and lined it deep with pain. They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,/and drooped the eyes with sorrow.”(“Fletcher McGee” lines 10-14) He slowly transforms and hurt her, not only physically, but also emotionally.  Ollie McGee becomes vengeful because she slowly leads her husband towards death. “[His] soul had entered in the clay,/fighting like seven devils.” (“Fletcher McGee,” lines 15-16) This drove him to the place where Ollie McGee lies. “In death, therefore, [she is] avenged.” (lines 12-13)  All of this makes her damaged, delicate, and full of revenge. All because of a man who wants to change her into something that she clearly is not. Slowly, he changes her and slowly, she becomes the woman that, at the end is left confused. Therefore, she is Ollie McGee- a woman in confusion.  Word Cited:  Masters, Edgar Lee. “Ollie McGee” The Spoon River Anthology. New York: Macmillan, 1946.