Everyone has a different perspective on life, some people have a positive one, while others have a negative. In Spoon River Anthology the reader can see that even married couples can have a different opinions on life. The poems Lucinda Matlock and Davis Matlock are two poems about living life, and although the narrators are married to each other, they both have two totally different outlooks on the subject. Lucinda lives a hard life, but is still content with it. On the other hand, Lucinda's husband Davis questions the way his life is lived. Another way the couple sees life differently is that Lucinda believes the goal of life is to love life, while Davis thinks the sole goal in life is death. The differences in these two poems highlights just …show more content…
What Misses. Matlock saw as the main goal of life was embrace life the way it was and love it. Quite often people make whatever situation s/he is in worse by simply being upset about what is going on, but even though it is challenging, having an accepting attitude like Lucinda can be very beneficial in trying to make a bad situation better. At the age of ninety-six Lucinda had succeeded what she saw as life's goal and passed on leaving behind a very important message on her epigraphy. Davis’ opinion of what the goal of life is to die. The end of Mr. Matlock’s epigraph basically says if we don’t live for ourselves we have nothing to look forward to but death. Davis Matlock makes a good point, but if people solely life for themselves not preparing for the next generation or helping others s/he is pretty selfish. A health balance needs to exist between helping oneself and helping others in order to live a fulfilling life. Davis reached his goal in life of death obviously because he wouldn’t have an epigraphy if he didn’t die, but I’m not too sure if he ever got to “live it out like a god” as he wished. I question if Lucia knew how her husband felt but I doubt she did, because considering the person she is she would have tried to help him. The opinion of the goal of life the Matlock's had were each very different, however they each reached what s/he believed was the right goal of