My name is George Gray, and my life has been wasted.  I am fifty eight years old, and have done nothing but cower away in my home in Spoon River.  This quaint little town is where I’ve spent my life, working as an accountant for my parent’s putrid oyster company.  I have been a prisoner of my own mind and body, never letting me do the things I wanted, gluing me to this little speck of a town, and depriving me of an actual purpose in life, much like the oysters I greatly hated.

  I am trapped in my body because it has failed me from the moment I was born.  I have been stricken with a rare skeletal disease that causes great pain when I walk or move.  So, in order to avoid this, I have lurched in the dark corners of my home for as long as I could move my misshapen legs.  And my back, oh my aching back, I was locked into a permanent hunch when my nanny dropped my as an infant.  I toppled down the stairs like ceramic doll.  My father said that she didn’t stay in this world very long after that.  My voice is very soft, so soft that I can barely hear myself.  I speak like this so that people do not notice me.  And when people do see me, they see a decrepit pile of bones, fear and sorrow.  My bloodshot eyes stare as they run away in terror.

  Even with these horrific features and a lack of purpose, I am a kind person at heart.  I love to read, I enjoy the theater, even though I don’t go that often, and I play chess with my father.  When I am bored of reading Moby Dick for the twentieth time, or have sustained enough of my father’s many, mid chess, lectures on economics, I will look out the window.  I would stare out to see all of the people go about their normal lives.  I see craftsmen, local guards, pickpockets, and many beautiful women.  They are truly beautiful.  They walk throughout the town flaunting their beauty to all of the blockheads that inhabit this fine land.  When I see these jewels of the periphery, I imagine a world where I am not this man of weakness and cowardice, but a handsome man with a beautiful wife and children.  I imagine myself sailing on a mighty ship, across the northern oceans, feeling the cool water splash on my face   Alas, this is nothing but a fantasy.  I imagine a world where I am not only a better person, but also, a person with a purpose.  But my constant search for a purpose in life has deprived me of the life I wanted, and has magnified the intensity of my fears.

  My fear has always overwhelmed me.  I fear the incompetents of the government.  I fear the chilling breeze that passes over the estate every winter.  I even fear the meaning of fear.  I am afraid of what I am.  I’m a shriveling goat, tied to a post.  The many fears I have just show me how much less of a man I turn into every day of my existence.  This is what pulls me away from the other joys in life.  I often hide from the many “normal” people in my parent’s office down by the lake.  The problem is that it reeks of death.  Not the nauseating smell of human corpses, I mean the salty aroma of oysters.  My heavily acquired vast fortune is from our oyster farming business at the Spoon River Lake.  My father to my great grandfather, the Grays have been farming, selling, and shucking these revolting things for centuries.  I have worked in the small office at our main farm.  I work on our finances, shipping receipts, order forms, and any other calculations that my parents place upon me.  Even though my body has betrayed me, my mind is forever growing.  My skill for math is far beyond that of my parents, yet I believe that they see me as a disappointment.  I never grew into a strong man like my father, and it is likely I will never find a significant other and give my mother grand children.  It is these facts that will permanently separate me from them, forever.

  One of my greatest fears is my lack of a purpose.  I discoed this in my search to become a more confident person, when I encountered this major defect about myself.  I have no meaningful purpose in life.  I work for my parents, but is that really my purpose?  Is my whole existence the constant filing, counting, calculating, and more filing for an oyster company?  Even for my standards, that is a very sad and degrading existence.  I began to search through every resource I could get my hands on to figure out this problem.  I would lock myself in the study for days, maybe even weeks, trying to figure out the solution to my enigma.  I studied different philosophies, different religions, and even cultish rituals to find the answer.  When my parents actually decided to take me to a play at the Spoon river theater, I refused.  I refused to have any form of interaction with anyone because they might distract me from the important issue.

  It wasn’t till the third year of searching for my purpose in the many books and scrolls in my personal library when I had a revelation.  I could have had a life with meaning.  If I hadn’t have spent my years, reading, and lurking, then I would be out there in the real world.  I would have seen plays, spent time with friends, of maybe even find a beautiful women who may have been Mrs. Gray.  Those things never happened or will ever happen because I have wasted my life trying to find its meaning when it was staring me right at my face.

  I wish I could just put on a mask, and transform into some handsome hero, and get away from this never ending, pointless, cycle of misery.  You might say that I am completely dressed and am likely to commit suicide at any minute.  I have tried already, numerous times.  When I tried to lift the pistol, all of the gunpowder seeped out.  When I stood over the roof, ready to jump, the wind blew me back.  These failures of death have told me something.  I am officially cursed to live like this, not even the swift embrace of death can take me away from this prison.  Death will be my only salvation.  It is a salvation that I could not seem to attain, no matter what I seem to do.