Walking away

poet

cecil dey lewis

context

A father recalling his sons first day of school

reflect process of walking away from those we love

or once loved (father walked away from mother - divorce)

themes

• Letting go and growing up

• Love and Distance

• Fear vs. Freedom

A sunny day with leaves just turning,​

Pathetic fallacy→ symbolising the ambivalence (contradictory ideas) of the speaker’s feelings on the day

it is a good day (sunny) but also a turning point for the worse (“leaves turning” – e.g. autumn beginning)

, then, like a satellite​
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away​

• double caesura → hardship of the moment difficult for the speaker

• enjambment → boy leaving is unstopable

• simile → the child is “wrenched”, from the safety of his “orbit” to drift away in open space –> showing just how scary this is for the speaker.

a half-fledged thing set free​
Into a wilderness

• avian imagery → baby bird barely able to leave its nest, with the use of “thing” implying a lack of development (Mother Any Distance)

• juxtaposition → positive and negative connotations: child is “set free” but into “a wilderness” – the father is has mixed feelings).

Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem

simile → comparing the child to nature: act of separation is natural, universal, unavoidable. But positive connotations of growth and new beginnings with the seed imagery – a shift from the “wilderness” a few lines earlier.

what God alone could perfectly show

biblical imagery → relate to God and his own son Jesus – the sacrifice he had to make

or it could relate to God (The Father) and his relationship with mankind: letting us go – free will, self-determination, and all of the terrible things we have done to one another as a result.

mankind made in his image so a process all parents go through

free will allows for choice so it make the the love so much stronger

love is proved in the letting go

verb (actively)→ ‘proved’ by definition shows the truth or existence of ‘love’ by ‘letting go’ 

partings, however difficult, however uncertain and potentially dangerous, are a necessary proof of love

general message of poem