The speaker is the primary, first-person singular character of “Anecdote of the Jar.” However, he only receives direct mention once in the first line of the poem with the first-person pronoun “I” in the active voice – “I placed a jar in Tennessee” (1). Afterwards, the poem makes no direct reference to the speaker as the main character and narrative perspective of the poem. As such, “Anecdote of the Jar” frequently reads like a third-person description of the jar in the natural Tennessee setting.

The minimal presence of the speaker throughout the body of the poem is both suggestive of the act of the human creation as an active choice, the decision to “[place] a jar” as the main subject, “I” of the sentence. Therefore, this initial act of intervention in the environment is evidence of the speaker’s large amount of agency, initially, as a character, as the...