"The world and it's desires pass away; but, the man who does the will of God will live Forever."

Using literary and poetic devises to stress the importance of hope, intuition, and desire over worldly objects, The Village Atheist warns that one must strive mightily toward immortality by taking a chance on something unseen and intangible. Edgar Lee Masters, author of Spoon River Anthology uses free verse, sarcasm and allusions to make the message a personal one that is easy to relate to. In addition, Masters utilizes isolation, metaphors, and a balanced antithesis to emphasize the importance of religion in daily live, and the futility of living in this world only.

The poem entitled "The Village Atheist" is about man who refused to believe in God until eh was undertaken with sickness, and began a slow painful death. It was then that he began to read "the Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus." In his epitaph he urges the living to do the same because he is now enlightened of the truth: God exists and in order to achieve immortality one must take drastic steps of faith.

Masters uses no regular meter or rhyming scheme in this poem. This free verse poetry sounds like a per

Masters isolates key phrases several times in this poem. This isolation is used for emphasis. In line 5, he isolates "of the infidels" in order to make the point that being talkative, contentious, and well versed mean nothing if one is misguided and only well versed in the arguments of skeptics. In line 7, he isolates "coughing myself to death" in order to accentuate the vivid imagery of a decrepit man on his death bed, coughing up blood and dying a slow death. He isolates line 12, "could not extinguish" in order to emphasize the dominance of the light over the darkness, the torch over the shadow." Using allusions to the Bible, Masters introduces the light because the "torch of hope and intuition" (line 9) is symbolic of God, "a light shining in a dark place" (2 Peter 1:17). "For God is light, in Him there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). Lines 13 and 14, "Listen to me, ye who live in the senses and think through the senses only", is also an allusion to the bible. Psalm 49:1 says "Here this, all you peoples; listen all who live in this world only." The Village Atheist's message is not to concern yourself with being "well versed in the arguments of the infidels" (lines 4 and 5

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 801
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)