GCSE (9-1): Literature: Poetry: AQA Love and Relationships: Walking Away: Quotes

'eighteen years ago, almost to the day -'

The first line indicates that the speaker is looking back on his son's first day at school as symbolic or a reflection of his son possibly leaving home to begin adult life

'The touch-lines new-ruled'

'new-ruled' suggests a new term at school, symbolic of new beginnings

give-and-take'

nature gives us priceless gifts such as children and relationships and it also takes them away

'wrenched'

A violent verb which connotes the violence of nature causing the separation between father and son

'set free / Into a wilderness'

Suggests danger and the difficulties for young people trying to make their way through life

'scorching / ordeals ... gnaws at my mind'

The language of violence is not overtly graphic but it helps us relate to the sense of emotional violence that the father is experiencing at the task of having to let his son go

"...like a satellite / Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away"

A simile which suggests the separation between two objects that work together

With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free'

The half-fledged thing could be the child whom the father feels is not yet ready to be set free or perhaps it is the father who is not yet ready to set his son free; the 'pathos' may belong to the father, which the son carries with him 'towards the school'

'A sunny day with leaves just turning,'

Leaves turning suggests a new season, possibly autumn; it relates the speaker's experience to nature; it suggests the understanding of new phases of life; alternatively, it could also suggest the speaker's realisation of his own age

symbolic meaning of autumn

Autumn marks the transition from summer to winter; suggesting that the speaker feels this time of letting his son go is actually the transition into a depressing phase of life; winter reminds us of the greying of age; perhaps he feels he is entering the winter of his life; this is part of 'nature's give and take' that he speaks about in the third stanza

'selfhood begins with a walking away,'

suggests this stage of letting his son go is the beginning of his son defining his identity and of him, the father, redefining his without his son

love is proved in the letting go'

reflects the sacrificial nature of parental love; he lets his son go to define his identify and find his way through the world, despite how painful it is for the father to let him go