In reading the poem titled Doc Hill in Spoon River Anthologyby Edgar Lee Masters it is interesting to see that the only reason that the doctor went out to help so many people was because he would rather not see his own family. His wife can not stand him and his son is a bad person in his opinion. I wonder why his wife hates him so much. Her story is not in the book, but I would have like to have seen the reason why she would hate him so much that he would rather be around poor sick people. Doc Hill does seem to have a pure soul because instead of filling an empty heart by having an affair or something of the sort, which some men in this book probably did resort to, he gets his love from the sick people that he helps. The only reason that I could think of as to why his wife hates him is because he would rather spend his time curing people. Maybe it started off where he was not spending enough time at home, and then it grew to where there was not much of a home to return to. That would explain why the son turned out so badly.
“My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs,” (15).
Something else that caught my attention was towards the end of the poem when the doctor talks about how when he died there were so many people on the lawn grieving over him because he had helped them all. He mentioned that besides these people coming on the day of the funeral, there was someone off to the side who did not have a poem for themselves so that is the only place they are mentioned.
“When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree at the grave hiding herself, and her grief!” (15).
I really was interested to see who this person was, but when I looked ahead I was upset to see that Em Stanton was not anywhere to be found. When he said that she was hiding herself behind the tree and she was also hiding the fact that she was sad about his death I almost felt like she was a hidden lover that he had on the side. I was surprised to see it just randomly show up there, so only thing that I thought it might be was the fact that she was having an affair even though he seemed to be a very pure individual while he helped the sick. Then again, that was his excuse to get out of the house.
