STANLEY KUNITZ -------- THE LAYERS

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Essay: “The Layers” is all about transformations. Elucidate.

            2.Discuss the poem as a metaphor of the journey of  life

            3.”The Layers” celebrate the insight that man gains as he carries on with his life.

 Discuss Stanley Kunitz is a great American poet. His childhood was traumatic with his father’s death, penury, his mother’s marriage and the death of his step father. His father had committed suicide on being bankrupt six weeks before his birth. Stanley worked as a butcher’s assistant. Human life is an accumulation of many different experiences that a person acquired in his different stages of life. Therefore “The Layers” is a metaphor of human life.

Stanley Kunitz’ famous poem “The Layers” is about the journey of human life. “Live in the layers, not on the litter” is the theme of the poem. It is written in free verse in a single stanza. Life is full of pains and sorrows and joys with troubles and hurdles on the path of  life. One must go  through these layers of life. The narrator says that he has walked through many stages of life. He lived and worked for others and on some stages of  life he lived and worked for himself. He has acquired all his friends with love and affection. But all these phases of life gave him a lot of experiences, bitter and sweet. These experiences have enriched his life and greatly transformed him into a different person. Therefore he is not what he was many years ago. He is not an young man today. He is getting old. But his basic principles of  life have not been changed.

The narrator sees the milestones of his life getting reduced toward the horizon. Experiences have transformed him and he has become a better person with wisdom to face life with all its problems and uncertainties. Many of intimate friends have passed away and the narrator is getting  lonely and old. Past memories often make him sad and the  memory of his friends bitterly stings his face. But he knows well that “one should not live on the litter but live in the layers”. Litter means the dustbin of old memories. One should live in the layers because life is a bundle of layers or changes. Change is essential for the progress of life. Human life is a long journey and we have to pass through many changes.

Whenever the narrator faces difficulties and problems, a heavenly voice guides him through the right path of life. The voice tells him “Live in the layers, not on the litter”. The heavenly voice tells him to go forward with hope and optimism. And he is still carrying on life with his changes.   KJT/- 25-03-2020