Walking Away C. Day Lewis

Critical perspective Biographical:     "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. Day-Lewis sets the scene on “a sunny day with the leaves just turning, the touch-lines new- ruled” to indicate that there is change in the air and there are new rules established between parent and child.

He has this image of his son walking away towards his friends instead of towards him and it “gnaws at [his] mind”. He searches for a rationale and concludes that “selfhood begins with a walking away, and love [is] proved in the letting go.” 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.

Paraphrase Almost exactly eighteen years ago –  A bright day and the leaves starting to change The painted lines fresh – since I saw you play It was your first match in football, when, similar to a satellite, You left your routine and started floating away To the back of a group of males. I watch You stroll from me in the direction of the school With an attitude of a baby bird finally let go Into the wild, the walk of someone Who doesn’t see a road where there should be one

That unsure person, getting farther away Like a flying seed that got away from the plant Has a quality I don’t understand About Earth’s give-and-receive–the tiny and hot Situations that bring heat to a person’s not permanent mold  I have experienced goodbyes that are worse, but not one that Still bothers me. Maybe it is sort of Telling me what only God can show –  How independence starts with a breakaway. And love is letting it happen

Theme Letting go isn’t necessarily abandoning someone, but it’s allowing someone to discover themselves. Day- Lewis understands the change in their relationship because he also went through the same thing. It’s still very difficult for him to experience, but as a father, he must bear with it and love his son so that he may find himself.

Point of view The speaker of this poem is a father as he watches his son walk away from him after a football game, but symbolically walk away from him in life. He speaks in first person to his son, a stream of consciousness as thoughts flood the father's head.