PLASTIC Poetry Notes – GCSE English Literature Past and Present: Poetry Anthology – Love and Relationships – Walking Away p.15

Poetic devices and their effects – form (ballad,

sonnet, free verse, dramatic monologue), alliteration,

rhyme, rhythm, onomatopoeia,

Regular five-line stanzas, rhyming abaca Establishes a calm tone, suggesting some kind of inevitability which suits the subject matter of a child growing up

Rhyming key words emphasise important ideas – ‘day’, ‘play’, ‘away’

Careful rhyme choices help to guide the reader through the main themes of the poem – the process of growing up

Dramatic monologue Conveys the hurt and pain of letting go from the parent’s perspective

Language and its effects – what sort of words are in

the poem? Violent, loving, colloquial, archaic, semantic

fields, diction, religious, romantic language

Regular references to change from various semantic fields – ‘satellite/Wrenched from its orbit’, ‘finds no path’, ‘like a winged seed’

As if the poet is using nature to reflect the ‘normal’ process of growing up and breaking away from a parent, using planets, birds, seeds, to emphasise the fact that children must break away from their parents

Semantic field of space – ‘satellite, orbit, drifting’ Shows first the closeness and the bond which then is broken and the son left to find their own way in ‘space’

Language of movement – ‘drifting, eddying, scatter, walking’ All different movements but all suggest a separation and a movement away from each other.

Alternative interpretations – Can quotations be read in

two ways for different meanings?

‘the scorching/Ordeals’ The idea of ‘scorching’ could be negative, showing that experiences can hurt and damage us, yet also the idea that ‘clay’ has to be ‘fired’ in order to complete and perfect a piece of pottery suggests these experiences are necessary

‘The touch lines new-ruled’ The beginning of the football season – could be the beginning of the son’s independence or the new boundaries for his life

‘the gait of one who finds no path where the path should be’ The lack of guidance. The parent feels there is no way for the child in life – they aren’t ready. But it could be about the unpredictability of life.

PLASTIC Poetry Notes – GCSE English Literature Past and Present: Poetry Anthology – Love and Relationships – Walking Away p.15

Structure and its effects – tonal shifts, pace, caesura,

what rhyme stresses, beginning, middle, end, repetition,

dialogue and where it happens, enjambment

Regular structure based around a snapshot in time but becoming a metaphor for the love between a parent and child

The second two stanzas change from a simple narrative to a more reflective section about children growing up

Enjambment from the first to the second stanza ‘away/behind a scatter of boys’

Suggests continuous movement, reflecting the motion of the boy away from his parent

Starts upbeat – ‘sunny...new...first’ – sudden shift with the caesura of ‘then’

Nostalgic and warm feel – the last positive memory of their relationship – then a sudden lurch into their relationship changing dramatically – the speaker was not ready to let the child go?

Tone and its effects – talking about moods which are

evoked and where, narrative voice

Reflective, thoughtful, slightly sad tone epitomised by ‘drifting away’, ‘pathos’, ‘irresolute’, ‘gnaws at my mind’

Exemplifies the dichotomy in the relationship, with the parent wanting the child to grow up, yet knowing that he has to ‘let go’ of the child he loves in order to achieve this

‘almost to the day’Conversational tone – implies the child is now an adult and can be talked to on an adult/friendly level

‘the small, the scorching ordeals’ Painful tone of the realities of life and what we have to endure

Imagery and its effects - metaphor, simile,

personification, visual sense

‘like a satellite/Wrenched from its orbit’ Simile suggesting the parent is the home planet and that their parting is a painful one

‘half-fledged thing’ Evocative of a baby bird, awkward and not quite ready to fly, suggesting the child is not quite ready to leave home, making his first attempt to leave the nest

‘into a wilderness’ Continues the image of the bird leaving the nest, suggesting the outside world is threatening and unwelcoming

Context – authorial, social and historical

Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-1972) "Walking Away” was written a year before his son from his second marriage was born. Perhaps that’s the reason for his reflection on Sean, his first son from his first marriage. Day-Lewis went to boarding school and had his son do the same. Cecil Day-Lewis was a successful man, he also went through a search of “selfhood” as he explored the idea of communism, and for him to not want the same for his son to do the same search wouldn’t be love.

PLASTIC Poetry Notes – GCSE English Literature Past and Present: Poetry Anthology – Love and Relationships – Walking Away p.15