This is suggesting that she overwhelms her respectful son with cultural responsibilities. The word ‘despair’ suggests to is she needs him keep herself going. The metaphor “..a wedge in the door, letting in light” creates a visual setting in our minds by emphasising how her son lets in light into her life. Also, how the son, “a wedge”, keeps all the despair out of her time and at the same time, lets in light and even hope into her life.
In the next stanza, she talks about how she cries at night, when she expresses
“I prayed each day and cried
Your brothers and sisters to sleep”
Here, she is being unsympathetic of their needs. This ultimately evokes our sympathy towards the children whom she puts to sleep. They are forced to see their mother in tears each night, in effect this makes us feel angry at the mother for not being strong and for not treating her children equally. She puts a great burden on her son, this is unhealthy and we then assume this is perhaps why he left.
Later in the poem, we learn details of how trapped and hurt the mother feels.
“Living in this kitchen, only hearing voices,
Hurts more than your fathers blows”
Here we learn how the mother desperately needs her son to come back. The mother feels more hurt that her son has left, “hurts more than your fathers blows”. We learn that this might the reason the son left, that his father physically beats his mother. At this moment she is full of misery and lost all hope of her son returning.
The final two lines illustrate the strongest expression of the mothers anxiety and despair. As she says,
‘Your leaving, Without warning,
Banged shut my life’
We can see that the son has clearly left her on her own, and without warning. The mother has no light in her life, she is now full of darkness. The onomatopoeic ‘banged’, is effective because the door has finally been closed. The repetition of ‘b’ in banged and blows, stick on our minds and make us think about the mother’s feelings. The overall mood is sombre, and full of desolation, as the poem comes to an abrupt end. Explicating that the son’s decision to leave has brought an abrupt end to their relationship.
‘Walking Away’ contrasts this and is explained from a father’s point of view. This poem is set within a western cultural context. ‘Walking Way’ expresses the pain of separation between a father and son relationship, and how hard the acceptance of letting the son walk away can be. It is set out in four stanzas with four lines in each, and has a regular rhyme scheme. The pace of the poem is slow and represents the fathers sadness as his son is leaving. The poem uses a range of natural images to convey his feelings, such as when he says
‘Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem’
In the first stanza, the writer has added a pause to emphasise that he is stopping to reminisce about the past, as if it is playing back like a video in his head.. He thinks about the times when he used to play football with his dear son and pauses again, when he is overcome with emotion. Then, the poets says that his son is taken away from him,
‘Like a satellite, wrenched from its orbit’
The emotive ‘wrenched’ is used to convey the fathers initial anger at that his son being snatched from him. When he uses the simile ‘like a satellite’, this is conveying his anger, and how his son has to go out into the world on his own . The word ‘satellite’ itself implies that the son is a heavenly being orbited by the Earth. The poet uses ‘drifting’, suggesting that his son is slowly but surely moving away from him and that it is inevitable.
The poet carries on to describe the next part of his son ‘Walking Away’, which is starting school.
‘I can see you walking away from me towards the school,
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free’
This evokes our sympathy as the poet softens his tone and remembers that it is inevitable, and that it is bound to happen at some point. The writer also says,
‘Into a wilderness, the gait of one,
Who finds no paths where path should be’
He is saying here that his son has got to make his own way in the big world, and that having to watch him do it by himself is the hardest part, but he has to be strong for him. This ultimately is how his son will learn to be independent.
In the third stanza, the poet uses natural imagery when he says,
‘That hesitant figure, eddying away’
The word ‘eddying’ creates an image in our minds of his son slipping away, and that he is finally learnt to be on his own two feet. The author talks about his son being ‘like a winged seed loosened form its parent’. He is saying that at one point his son will be blown away and take all the things he has learnt and grow into an adult, having his own family. He says,
‘…I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take-the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute day’
We learn at this point, that the author knows that this has to happen, to facilitate these little things can hurt us, and the fact we can also learn from these experiences.
In the final stanza the author finally expresses his accepting of his son ‘Walking Away’. He says that he has had to lose people before, that this is not the first time this has happened, but this is clearly the worse parting.
‘Perhaps it is roughly saying what God alone could perfectly show-
How selfhood begins with a walking away’
Here, the author is saying only god can show you the way, and god will look after you.. The last line of the stanza,
‘And love is proved in the letting go’
He is saying that if you really love someone then the ‘love for them is proved in the letting go’. The father knows that this is the only way for his son to grow up independently and now realizes that it is time for his to go and the make the most of his life he’s got left
Both poems differ in structure as ‘Eldest Son’ has 6 couplets where the first couplet deviated from the rest. Whereas ‘Walking Away’ has 4 stanzas with 5 lines in each. The language used in both poems are understandable but in ‘Walking Away’, C. Day Lewis uses sophisticated language which has an stronger and an emotional effect on the reader. The language used is endearing and the message he delivers is poignant. ‘Walking Away’ has more use of the natural imagery and metaphors. In ‘Eldest Son’ the language is simple and has slight use of metaphors and vivid imagery. We are shown in this poem that love can sometimes be possessive. The mother burdens her son with cultural responsibilities and we assume that this is why the son perhaps left. The mood is sombre, melancholic and depressing. The mother is still trying to come to terms with her son leaving and becoming independent. Whereas in ‘Walking Away’ the father accepts the fact that his son has to move on and wants him to live his life and grow up to become mature. I felt more empathised with ‘Walking Away’ by C. Day Lewis as it right for the child to be separated from their parent(s) and go on to live life independently.
