Mickey M’Grew looks back on his life and sees one repeated pattern: his own strength was never the problem, but something outside him always pulled him down. He once earned enough money to go away to school, only to hand it over when his father suddenly needed help. Things kept going that way until he ended up as a man-of-all-work in Spoon River.
The poem ends with the moment of his death, when he was cleaning a water tower. After being hauled up seventy feet, he unhooked the rope from his waist and laughingly grabbed the top, but his hands slipped on the slime and he plunged down through the darkness. The mood is bitter and weary, mixing dark irony with a feeling that life—and even death—kept dragging him down no matter how strong or capable he felt.