Analysis Of Robert Hayden 's ' Those Winter Sundays '

The use of grim diction throughout the poem reveals the negative relationship between the father and

Similar to Roethke’s poem, the tone in Hayden’s poem experiences A shift in tone from nostalgic to remorseful. Looking back at his childhood regretting his relationship with his father, and how he, the son, treated his dad. The speaker recalls how his father labored for him in order to provide him with many comforts. In the last stanza the tone takes a drastic shift to remorse as the speaker asks himself, “What did I know, what did I know.” The speaker is contemplating how he had taken his father for granted for so many years.

In order to make ends meet, the speaker’s dad sacrificed for him every day; even on those winter Sundays. The pain stricken features, the agony, and the strife the father exhibits, was to not let the speaker have to experience his life. The “lonely offices” the speaker’s father exhibits, is an effect of showing love for his family. The deep, dark, depressing places the speaker’s father exhibited; shows the speaker that his father loves and cares for him. In the poem, Hayden uses many descriptive words to set the scene for his work.

Most commonly known as a day of rest, Sunday’s are supposed to be spent lounging around and resting after a week's work. Instead of catching up on lost hours of sleep, Hayden’s father rose early on Sunday’s smothering himself with laborious tasks for the benefit of his family. Intertwined into the sentence the word “too” is used to assume that his father works at odds hours reoccuringly. One can infer that Hayden’s father not only rises early on Sunday’s to work, but other days throughout the week. Vivid descriptive words are also used throughout the first stanza including, “blueblack”, “blazed”, and , “cracked”.

In one line of the poem, Hayden states “No one ever thanked him”, after describing the things his father would do out of love. This line may mean he did what he did because he cared for the ones around him. When a person cares for another they don’t expect payment for their actions, which is just what his father was doing.

Those Winter Sundays In this poem by Robert Hayden, the author speaks of his father as being a hardworking man that goes through the same backbreaking routine every day of the week to provide for his family, even on Sunday which is supposed to be the day of rest during the week. The constant willingness to get up early every morning to go out and work to be able to provide and the authors feeling of missing his chance to show appreciation for his dad’s work seem to be the theme of this poem. The poem describes how the work the father did everyday took a toll on his body, but he continued to do it so that he could survive and his son could have a good life. The first stanza talks about how the author never showed gratitude for his

Hayden employs several instances of harsh consonance throughout the poem, utilizing words like “cracked,” “ached,” and “breaking” (Hayden). These descriptions further implicate how severe and demanding the father’s physical

Kinesthetic imagery is a strong component that is used mostly in the first stanza of the poem, to create the atmosphere of sacrifice. As a result, the reader gets a vivid description that allows them to feel the father’s sacrifices. For example in line two of the poem “and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold” (Hayden 677). Instantly the reader feels that paralyzing coldness that the father is feeling, followed by line three and four “then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made” (677) the reader get further knowledge that the father is a hardworking man that is constantly exposed to a cold climate, as evidence the reader feels the fathers painful cracked hands due to harsh weather and hard work. None the less,

In the beginning of the poem, we are introduced a father who works to provide his family with a warm home on a Sunday morning. Sundays are typically known as a rest day, a day to relax and sleep in. However, the father in the poem gets up early on a cold Sunday morning to work for his family. In Line 1, Hayden (2012) says, “Sundays too my father got up early” (p. 13). The word “too” gives us the understanding that he most likely got up early all the other days of the week as well.

In this poem Hayden explains how hard a speaker’s father worked and what had done for him. He wakes up before sunrise while other people enjoy their sleep. In addition to working every weekday, he continues to work over the weekend to make a better income for his family. He never receives thanks from anyone for his hard work. This makes the reader consider the father’s feelings. The second and third section of this poem explains how the speaker’s father cares for his family. He takes substantial consideration for the comfort of his family. He wakes up early and warms the house by turning on the fireplace. He waited until the house was warm before waking his son up. This action indicates his love for his son. With how often the father worked,

Robert Hayden’s poem describes the relationship between a father and a son by speaking about what occurs on Sundays during the winter. It’s filled with dark words such as “blueblack,” “cold splintering,” “chronic angers,” and “lonely (offices)” to describe the narrator’s father and the atmosphere around his house. The father seems to give off a feeling of regret and tiredness, could be with his life or the position he is in at the moment. Right off the bat, the man the narrator describe reminded me of my grandfather. A lovable and caring man but often caught with a straight face and came across in a harsh, strict manner. And just like the narrator comes across, I thought he wasn’t the kind man everyone saw him as. I thought of him as a hard

Finally, in Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays, a new relationship is depicted. The poem describes the unappreciated sacrifices a father makes for his son. His son fails to understand the work that his father is doing to keep his son sheltered and fed. As he grows up though, the son comes to appreciate the struggles of his father, “Speaking indifferently to him [his father], who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well.” p. 263. Relationships between fathers and children are not always the way they seem at the time, they are extremely different with perspective and applied maturity.

Starting with the first 2 lines of the poem, “Sundays too my father got up early, and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold” (Hayden, Those Winter Sundays – Making Literature Matter: Anthology for Readers and Writers 6th ed), I thought of my Father. Being an infantryman in the United States Army required him to leave for work very early, in fact I rarely can recall an occasion of him still being home when I woke up during one of his work days. At that time we lived in New York,

Starting with the first 2 lines of the poem, “Sundays too my father got up early, and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold” (Hayden, Those Winter Sundays – Making Literature Matter: Anthology for Readers and Writers 6th ed), I thought of my Father. Being an infantryman in the United States Army required him to leave for work very early, in fact I rarely can recall an occasion of him still being home when I woke up during one of his work days. At that time we lived in New York,

The poem is centered on one question: “what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?” The majority of the poem is examples of “love’s austere and lonely offices”. One such example would be when the boy polishes his shoes, probably getting ready to go to church. The father, although poor, still passes on good values to his son by going to church on Sundays. Another example would be the father waking up earlier than the rest of the house to get it warmed up. He deeply cares and loves his family and doesn’t want them to suffer in the cold and darkness as long as possible (only suffer at night). Another example of the father’s love is when he wakes up earlier and gets the wood from the cold outside weather to keep the family and house warm instead of enlisting for help from his family.