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Walking Away by C Day-Lewis - AQA The poem. Walking Away explores the experience of a parent watching their child grow. Content, ideas, language and structure are explored.
KEY THEMES. INDEPENDENCE, AGING, REFLECTION, CHILDHOOD, MEMORY . RELATIONSHIP. FATHER / CHILD. LOVE. PARENTAL, PATERNAL, DISTANT. The title “Walking Away” This use of specific temporal deixis emphasises the importance that Day-Lewis feels it has on his life. Beginning of the school year, continuing the theme of change and the development.
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Jul 22, 2020 · You walking away from me towards the school. With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free. Through the use of the bird metaphor ‘half-fledged’, C-Day Lewis portrays the boy’s vulnerability and his youthful naivety. The word ‘fledged’ describes a young bird that has just become capable of flight.
Key learning points. Day-Lewis uses a simile to show the overwhelming pain he feels initially at the separation from his son. Day-Lewis uses natural imagery to convey how he feels his son is not yet ready to be independent.
- Stanza 1
- Stanza 2
- Stanza 3
- Stanza 4
The first stanza of Walking Away, which can be read in full here, reveals that the speaker is thinking back upon the past eighteen years of his life. These past eighteen years have been centered around his child, the one he watched grow up as the seasons turned, and the “sunny day” turned to fall while the child grew and changed immensely in only t...
In this stanza, the speaker reverts to his reminiscence of the past as he remembers his son “behind a scatter of boys”. The memories are so clear and vivid that the speaker claims, “I can see you walking away from me towards the school”. This is, perhaps, the son’s first day of school. The father felt the sting of the child growing up even back the...
The speaker remembers that on his son’s first day of school, the boy seemed “hesitant” as he moved away into the school. He seemed “like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem” as he seemingly fluttered away, unsure of himself or where he would go. The speaker admits that this is “something [he] never quite grasp[ed]”. He further describes thi...
In stanza four of Walking Away, the speaker explains to his son that he has experienced “worse partings” or perhaps partings that were more painful at the moment, such as loss through death. However, none of the partings he has experienced has had the same effect on him as the parting which happened little by little as his little boy grew into a ma...
Beginning with a memory of Sean's first football game, it is a meditation on the challenges children must brave on their own in order to grow up and on the pain parents suffer in allowing their children to "walk away" and face those challenges on their own. Read the full text of “Walking Away”.
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What God alone could perfectly show?
Aug 28, 2024 · Theme. Evidence. Poet’s intention. Distance within family relationships. Walking Away presents the first-person perspective of a parent as they remember watching their child leave for school: “I can see you walking away”
