In Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem, Eben Flood has several heroic qualities. He differs from a classical hero in being an ordinary man in an ordinary place. As a modern hero, his struggles are against the vagaries of normal daily life—the “uncertain lives of men”—and, in his particular case, apparently against alcohol abuse. Existing largely apart from society, he wages these struggles alone. To encourage the reader’s perception of Flood as heroic, Robinson deliberately compares him to a traditional hero, the knight Roland of the Medieval French epic Song of Roland. As Flood drinks from his uptilted jug, he looks like the ghost of Roland blowing a horn. Through this allusion, the poet compares Flood to the survivor of a battle and his drinking to a cry for help.

In Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem, "Mr. Flood's Party," Mr. Flood represents modern man because he is alienated and alone, and lost in a world that has become for him meaningless, yet he is an existential hero because he creates some meaning out of this meaningless world.

Accompanied by his jug, Eben Flood walks drunkenly home, talking to himself as though someone else were holding this jug. He becomes involved in an imaginary drama as an untethered soul because his friends are all gone. He sings "with only two moons listening," and

There was not much that was ahead of him, 
And there was nothing in the town below— 
Where strangers would have shut the many doors 
That many friends had opened long ago.

Eben Flood is an existential man, who seeks to create some meaning out of a meaningless world. He sings "Auld Lang Syne" but no one listens in the "silver loneliness"; nevertheless, he forms some sense of order with this song and with his valiant recall of memories with old friends; in fact, he is heroic as he creates meaning in his empty life.