Life Journey and Transition

At the literal level of the poem, the journey the boy takes is from his father's home to his mother's home. But this journey also symbolizes the boy's journey in life, from childhood to adolescence and beyond, which is clear from the father's reference to the "faint fuzz" growing on the boy's face. The father sees this first sign of adolescence as a "beginning," the visible evidence that the boy is about to leave childhood behind. The significance of this beginning is conveyed by the father's use of the phrase "his next life." In other words, the coming change is so radical it will seem as if the boy is living a different, entirely new life, not merely an extension of the life he is now living, such is the gulf between childhood and adolescence. The images in the poem reinforce this meaning of a...