Misinterpreted In Robert Hayden's 'Those Winter Sundays'

Oftentimes we view our pasts with regret. We feel as though we were oblivious to different ideas and if we had known then what we know now, our lives back then would have been different. As we mature and grow older, our view of the world is changed through experience and gaining wisdom. In "Those Winter Sundays," by Robert Hayden, the speaker is a grown man reflecting on his past self and his indifference toward his father when he was a child. Now that he is an adult, the speaker has come to recognize what regretfully he had been misinterpreting as neglectance. He has now learned to appreciate his father’s form of love. The speaker, as an adult, now understands exactly how difficult and lonely the duties of parental love can be and how …show more content…
In the next line, imagery and diction are used to create vivid details. Hayden uses imagery and diction when using the word “blueblack,” which is used to describe the cold and appeals to the sense of sight and touch. The term “blueblack” makes the reader think of the extreme cold that results in changes of the skin color; one can imagine discolored, frostbitten skin due to freezing temperatures. Imagery is seen when the speaker’s father “put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,” since it gives the reader a glimpse of what the father looked like while going through his grueling daily routine. Hayden uses words with consonants that sound harsh such as "cold," "cracked," and "ached" to reveal the rigorous life of the father in lines two and three. Through these words, diction is then turned into imagery as the father’s “cracked hands that ached” is easily depicted. The same “cracked hands” serve to symbolize the hard work the father was willing endure due to his …show more content…
The author describes the cold as "splintering, breaking," which appeals to both the sense of sound and touch, thus making it imagery. These words can be considered figurative language since it gives the impalpable cold, characteristics of ice; the author uses the words “splintering, breaking” to help the reader envision the cold as tangible. Details are seen when the speaker was called “when the rooms were warm,” the reader can presume that the warmth the speaker is experiencing is all due to the father’s hard work. In the last sentence of the second stanza, the speaker voices how he is scared or fearful. Hayden uses diction when describing the “chronic angers” found in the house, in which the word choice he used for “chronic” concludes that the anger from within the house has been persisting for a long time and are not ceasing any time soon. The author uses personification as well to describe the house’s “chronic angers,” which makes it seem as though the house itself has the condition, when in fact it is the ones who dwell within it who suffer from the persistent rage. By giving the house the condition of having “chronic angers” it shows a possible misinterpretation the speaker could of had of the emotional state of his father. Rather than stating who was the cause of the angers in the house, he attributes it to the house itself, showing there may not be any particular culprit to the