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In the poem "Jacob Goodpasture" by Edgar Lee Masters, is Goodpasture the father of a son in the war or a soldier himself?

In the poem "Jacob Goodpasture" by Edgar Lee Masters, we hear the voice of an old father mourning the loss of his soldier son. At the opening of the poem, Goodpasture mentions Fort Sumter and "the war," referring to the start of the US Civil War in the 1860s. Goodpasture mourns the loss of the "republic" - the united nation - and is bitter about its division. We can tell from these comments, and from...

In the poem "Jacob Goodpasture" by Edgar Lee Masters, we hear the voice of an old father mourning the loss of his soldier son. At the opening of the poem, Goodpasture mentions Fort Sumter and "the war," referring to the start of the US Civil War in the 1860s. Goodpasture mourns the loss of the "republic" - the united nation - and is bitter about its division. We can tell from these comments, and from his calling the war "unjust" that he does not support the war cause.


Jacob Goodpasture also mourns the loss of his "soldier son" who died in battle. Though the son is buried to the "call of trumpets and the sound of drums" - which suggests he died honorably and is being honored with a military funeral - Goodpasture's heart is broken since his son died in this unjust war. The poem even suggests that Goodpasture died of this grief (he is 80 years old when his son is buried) since he "crept here under the grass" after his son's death. Since we know that Spoon River Anthology, the collection from which this poem comes, is a series of poems narrated by people buried in a cemetery, this reinforces this possibility. 

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