GCSE (9-1): Literature: Poetry: AQA Love and Relationships: Walking Away: Author's Purpose

to explore the sacrificial nature of parental love

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

to illustrate the changing nature of parent-child relationships

The poem also explores how relationships change over time like 'Follower' by Seamus Heaney and 'Mother Any Distance' by Simon Armitage

to express the pain of letting go

There is a sense of shock for the father who can't quite let go of his son but has to accept that the relationship is changing, and his son is growing up; this makes for a good comparison with 'Mother Any Distance'

to explore the 'give-and-take' antithetical reality of nature

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

to express the violence of separation

...like a satellite / Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away'; a simile which suggests the separation between two objects that are tightly bound together

to illustrate the inexorable character nature

the speaker cannot control the give-and-take reality of nature

to explore the natural cycle of new beginnings

'The touch-lines new-ruled', 'leaves just turning,' 'Your first game of football', 'a half-fledged thing set free'' all suggest new seasons, or new beginnings, symbolic of new phases of life for the son and transition into old age for the speaker

selfhood definition

A noun denoting 'the quality that constitutes one's individuality; the state of having an individual identity'

to express the need for selfhood

'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