Comparing My Papa's Waltz 'And Those Winter Sundays'

As we know, a father is the most important person besides one’s mother. However, since a father is mostly the one who works and supports the family, he does not usually interact with his children or express his love to them as their mother does. Therefore, some of the prominent authors have chosen this as the theme of their poems. For instance, “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden are two of the most famous poems about father’s love. Even though both poems show the narrators’ contradictory feelings about their relationship with their father, their imagery, theme, tone are different from each other. While the author of “Those Winter Sundays” expresses regret for not being to realize the father’s …show more content…
Hayden continues his imagery by using the phrase “Speaking indifferently” to indicate the narrator’s tense uncomfortable relationship with his father at the moment, which he relates it to “the chronic angers of that house” (Shmoop Editorial Team). The poem becomes more vivid by the way Hayden uses imagery. The reason is because when people read the poem, they can experience the winter cold, the warmth of fire place, and the harsh atmosphere in the narrator’s house. In addition, the way Hayden put imagery in his poem also implies that the father is a very quiet person; he express his love only by doing the work, and without the acknowledgement of anyone in the house. On the other hands, Roethke’s use of imagery creates a different effect from Hayden’s. The poem starts with the description of the smell of whiskey on the father’s breath. It is really strong that “Could make a small boy dizzy.” Roethke also uses words such as “waltzing” or “romped” to make the readers feel like this is not simply a father carries his son to bed, but they are dancing in high spirits. It shows an exciting atmosphere which is totally different from “Those Winter Sundays.” Then, on the next two stanzas, Roethke describes the frightful relationship between …show more content…
While the theme of “Those Winter Sundays” is how the narrator recalls his father’s love expression and sacrifice, the theme of “My Papa’s Waltz” is about how the narrator feels and admires his father. In the first stanza of “Those Winter Sundays,” it took place on an early Sunday morning, when the narrator’s father woke up and started preparing for the day. The word “too” in the first line implies that not only this Sunday, but also other “Sundays” and every day of the week, his father would wake up and do the same thing. Then, the narrator describes his father’s hands, which are suffered “with cracked” from his job. This demonstrates that his father’s must have a really tough job such as manual labor because he also mentioned the word “labor” in the next line. However, his father still managed to light up the fireplace to warm up the house for his children. Even though the father has done all these works for his family including the narrator, the narrator recalled that: “No one ever thanked him.” For the narrator’s father, doing these works is a way he expressed his love nonverbally, but no one seemed to appreciate what he did. In the last stanza, when the narrator remembered the way he spoke to his father which is “indifferently,” but he did not quote any specific statement, we can imply that they barely interact and communicate with each other. It could probably because of