Write a critical appreciation of the poem that follows, looking particularly at its language, structure and imagery. You may find it helpful to know that the poet, Hugo Williams, is the son of the actor a playwright Hugh Williams.

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Sunday, 09 March 2003                Jad Salfiti

A2 English

Write a critical appreciation of the poem that follows, looking particularly at its language, structure and imagery. You may find it helpful to know that the poet, Hugo Williams, is the son of the actor a playwright Hugh Williams.

“Walking out of the room backwards” is written from the point of view of a child about his father. The poem tells of the father’s difficulty in finding work as an unemployed actor at fifty. The use of repetition “Out of work at fifty, smoking fifty a day” hammers home that the father has reached an age where acting jobs are not as easy to find as they once were, this also draws attention to the fact is the “first time in his life” he has gone to auditions, the use of numbers is important, because children have a tendency to place trust in statistics and figures, numbers are used as a form of authority, the young narrator permeates the tale with this outlook.

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The narrator emulate his father’s persona by drawing attention to small details such as “his sheepskin coat” and the fact he is “smoking fifty [cigarettes] a day” this allows the reader to construct a mental image of the narrator’s father; these memorable pieces of personal property embody the narrator’s father, and are almost like an actor’s costume in a stage play. The language in the first two stanzas is vivid and simple. Throughout the first two stanzas the diction reflects the profession of the narrator’s father and field is drawn from a theatrical register “amused”, “frightened”, and “horrified”,  

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