Hayden's Use Of Allusion In Those Winter Sundays

Robert Hayden’s sorrowful “Those Winter Sundays” demonstrates how the utilization of allusions, consonance, symbolism, and alliteration establish a dramatic and emotional effect.
Beginning with the word “Sundays,” Hayden references Christianity, generating images of a resurrected son, sacrificed by his own father. Building upon the same tensions found in this familiar story, the speaker shares bittersweet remembrances of Sunday mornings with his father. Like the Christian story of God’s son Jesus, suffering, sacrifice and exaltation are prominent themes. Through these allusions and careful attention to the effect of sound, Hayden paints a harsh picture of a father who makes many sacrifices for his son, but also brutalizes him. The speaker’s anger and guilt are revealed in the first two stanzas. However, Hayden’s use of the past tense and clear references to time suggest that, eventually, the speaker reaches a new point of view and expresses a forgiveness for his father. …show more content…
The dominant sounds of z, k, and b in words such as “blueblack” become particularly labor-intensive for the mouth, especially in a sequence such as: “banked fires blaze.” In this somewhat ominous image of his father preparing a fire, the consonance of the letter b and the consecutive monosyllabic words reduce the pace of the rhythm, inducing a pensive tone. The stanza is then finalized with a terse sentence describing a grave silence “No one ever thanked him.” These highly patterned instances of consonance are revealing of the complex reality of the lives of these