Spoon River Anthology: The Hill–Theodore the Poet

The adjective could also be an ironic pun, since there is nothing respectful about going bankrupt through lying or robbery and murder.

The adjective also means "showing deep sadness"--both definitions fit, since the cruelty of Fletcher McGee seems to have been more mental than physical. Living with this turned Ollie's beautiful face into a sad, ugly one. This made Ollie hate herself and her husband.

The chosen definition is for a noun, but the example sentence uses the word as an adjective to modify "trap." As an adjective, "patent" can mean "open; affording free passage." This definition would make the situation seem as ironic as the name of the hardware store owner: Robert Fulton invented steamboats that transported passengers through America; Robert Fulton Tanner invented a trap that caught a rat that bit him and sent him to his grave.

Rhetoric can also be "loud, confused, empty talk"--the two definitions show how the epitaph was written and what the epitaph is about. The use of the phrase "the elements so mixed in him" to describe a personality and the personification of nature to praise the dead are signs of a high-flown style. But the epitaph is filled with empty lies that confuse the man Cassius Hueffer actually was with the presence his headstone would continue to have.

The speaker's nickname is "Indignation" ("a feeling of righteous anger"). It is a fitting description of his attitude towards life, because he'd expected meadows (symbolic of flowery happiness), but he got bogs and mires instead (symbolic of muddy difficulty). In addition to his own fall from good Welsh stock into white trash, he was stuck with a slatternly wife (who's dirty, untidy, and possibly sleeping around) and a daughter who got disrespected to death.

"Those who could not pay" could be improvident, since they might focus on enjoying their present health without putting any money aside for future medical emergencies. But those who could not pay could also be impoverished ("poor enough to need help from others"). Another pair of possibly overlapping descriptions that concerned Doctor Meyers is "weak" and "halt" ("disabled in the feet or legs").

The next line asks the question: "What do they mean, anyway?" Ironically, the speaker's first name is Knowlt, but he doesn't know that the pedestal is honoring him for dying "for his country." While Knowlt asks the question because he doesn't know Latin and because he had joined the army to save himself from jail, the author could be questioning the idea of dying for a country that was at war with itself.

Nirvana is a state often associated with Buddhism, when the soul is perfected and stops going through the suffering of reincarnation. But here, the term is used to mean a "place of complete bliss and delight and peace." The Christian aspect of the example sentence is suggested by the importance of the church in Spoon River and by the adjective "rapturous" which could allude to the Rapture (when Christ returns and raises people from the earth to meet him in Heaven).