Yehuda Amichai: Stages of Life

           Yehuda Amichai’s work is filled with sentiments and ideas that appeal to a wide range of people. His work, “God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children,” is no exception. Within the multilayered work he references the stages of life, their relative ease/difficulty, as well as the religious and secular tones that go along with those stages of life. He also cleverly uses punctuation to help further convey the point of his utterances.

            The stages of life referenced in the work are childhood, the adolescent period, and adulthood. Each of these stages has its own level of pity from God. In childhood God has the most pity. This can be taken literally, for those of a religious disposition, or metaphorically. If taken as the latter childhood represent a naïve time of existence. Everything under the sun is new, exciting, and stimulating. The body grows stronger every day and one’s capacity to learn appears to be limitless. Children have a chance to craft their own destiny and only an act of God can stop them. It’s important to note that the line corresponding with this sentiment ends in a hard stop. Using such punctuation makes it appear as a cold hard fact. As we will see later this is not the case for all stages. It also depicts that Childhood has a defined beginning and endpoint. This endpoint leads into the next stage, adolescence.

            The second stage is adolescence. This too ends in a hard stop signifying a fact and a determined period of time. But, it is also a bit less optimistic about the chance of pity from God. The text states, “He has less pity on schoolchildren” (Amichai ln. 2). This is in part due to the nature of humankind. As we grow older we advance in thought and in body. The world isn’t as fresh as it once was and our fascination with God’s creation begins to take on a jaded hue. The hearts and minds of people are introduced to some of the cold truths of existence and the world no longer seems the perfect place it did when one was a child. The end of this line leads into the brutal realities of adulthood.

            Finally the subject of adulthood it broached. The lines here become longer, adding more information and insight into God having no pity on adults. The hard stop gives way to commas allowing the journey to continue on with only brief respites from the difficulty to be faced in the adult world. Although there is much horror in the world there still remains a glimmer of hope. When referencing this brief times of relief (primarily through love or by reaching old age) there is a lack of stops signifying the fleeting nature of such experience. It also shows how time will continue on like a stone rolling down a steep hill.

            Finally, Amichai’s speaker notes that the power for compassion resides in all of us. He uses only one soft stop in the final stanza giving the reader a moment to pause before the grand message of the poem is laid out. That message is that even if God shows no pity we still harbor the ability to show compassion toward one another through all stages of life.

Works Cited

Amichai, Yehuda. “God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children”. The Norton Anthology of World        Literature: Shorter Third Edition, Two- Volume Set. W.W. Norton. Ed. M Puchner. 2012. 1620-1621. Print.