Henry Layton & Lucinda Matlock
Henry Layton tells the reader about how his father was gentle and his father was violent, and it wasn’t just that he was both of those that killed him. He claims
“neither half of me wrought my ruin.
It was the falling asunder of halves,
Never a part of eachother,
That left me a lifeless soul”
This is an interesting idea. In most books when one person is attempting to be two people at one and put on a facade for someone else, or another group of people, this causes their demise. The stress and fastidiousness required to keep up two personalities and acts is usually too much and that is what kills them. That or they get discovered and murdered. Even if these two ‘people’ are working together for the real person to achieve their goals, it’s not a failure if the two don’t ‘jive’, a problem Henry Layton had.
Lucinda Matlock’s poem is deep and really reflects positively on her life. Despite how her sons and daughters turned out she’s able to accept that it’s time to go, at age ninety-six, and learns that life is something to be enjoyed as well as to be a time to experience everything you’re meant to experience.
