Literary Analysis Of Those Winter Sundays, By Robert Hayden

Superior Essays
“Love isn 't something you find. Love is something that finds you.” (Love Quotes) This quote by Loretta Young can define one of the life lessons learned by the author in the poem “Those Winter Sundays.” Written by Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” (Kelly, 270) is one of those poems that allows readers to feel emotionally from the heart. This fourteen line poem goes beyond a deeper meaning than what the text reads. It is a poem that teaches its reader’s the bigger meaning of life, rather than overlooking it and taking too much for granted. In a child’s perspective, some of the things that parents do for their children sometimes go unappreciated, or recognized. This poem outlines the hard work, dedication, and love a father provides for …show more content…
As the beginning of the poem reads, “Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueback cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze” (Kelly, 142-143). The author begins by telling the readers, that even on Sunday’s after the long work week, his father has the strength to get out of bed early, and start the fire to heat the house. Readers can also visualize that his job is not an easy task. As Hayden describes his father’s hands as “cracked hands that ached from labor” readers can visualize the painful and tender hands his father has. However, this does not stop him from staying in bed on Sunday’s. The father looks past his pain, and goes on to his task of keeping his family …show more content…
Recognizing how someone, even a child, can feel so surrounded by love, and not truly see it until their older. With Hayden growing up with a foster family, at first he might not have realized the love and affection his family had for him. One of the messages outlined in this poem was the hard work contributed from the father. This poem accurately displays how someone puts their care for their children before themselves. Even with sore hands and feeling emotionally feeling weak Hayden’s father shows readers how strongly he was dedicated to his family. Behind the dreadful mornings Hayden felt, dragging himself out of bed when the house was warmed, he learned what it was like to love someone. It is important others appreciate everything in their lives that parents, friends, or family give to them. Often something that can mean the most to an individual can become overlooked, such as a family meal. Being surrounded by loved ones, and being thankful for the food on the plates. Those moments can turn into memories that someone will want to cherish

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    “Winter Dreams” is an excellent short story. The setting and tone of “Winter Dreams” draw the reader into the story wonderfully. The story “Winter Dreams” takes place mainly in Black Bear, Minnesota, sometime before World War I. The town sounds, to the reader, idyllic and peaceful.…

    • 294 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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.…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This poet has showed the emotions of fear and love through word choice, imagery, and metaphors. Although the poem may sound simple and easy to understand, “My Papa’s Waltz” is really a complex story of parental love and abuse. The title of “My Papa’s Waltz”…

    • 391 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    But what the parent does not realize is that sometimes caring too much for the children might result in losing the loving and friendly relationship between the parents and the children. In the poem The Possessive the speaker Sharon Olds uses a lot of metaphors and similes to describe her relationship with her…

    • 982 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The diction in the poem helps show the speaker’s emotion and regrets toward his father when he was young and as an adult. Hayden uses diction to keep the poem short, however still have a deep meaning. The first line of the poem, “Sundays too my rather got up early,” shows the father’s hard-working persona. However, the formal title of “father” rather than dad or pop shows the distance of the relationship between the two characters. In the first stanza, “harsh,” “pain,” and “cold are used to depict the type of job the father did.…

    • 996 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The narrator in Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" displays a son's recollection of how his father conveyed love for him by way of his deeds. It is a poem about a father-son bond and all the different emotions that touch both of them: affection, approval, anxiety, fault and even animosity. The narrator recalls on Sunday mornings the father woke up at the crack of dawn to add fuel to the furnace fire. The son was never woken up until the house became warm enough to tolerate so he could get dressed. His father got up early every day.…

    • 265 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This puts extreme pressure and stress on the worker, and can have other negative effects as well. The subject of the poem is a parent talking about their son and the strain that their job puts on the bond between them and their loved ones. Working long hours such as these can damage family relationships, which are mostly built on quality time. Not only did the Industrial Revolution endanger workers and their lives at home, but caused a profusion of threats to the living…

    • 1427 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hayden centers the theme of the poem around his father, reminiscing about the hard labor his father endured, even on “blueblack cold” days, as he states in the second line of the poem. He expresses love and gratitude, which is also the theme, towards his father as he describes what, every Sunday, his father did. In the line, “… with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday labor made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him,” Hayden explains how, at the moment of action, his father was not appreciated. Of course, as a child appreciation is not always shown directly toward parents, yet in later years his love for his father grows as he realizes what his father went through just to provide for him and his family.…

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The phrases and emotions used seems to signify a revelation he had while writing the poem. How parents love their children and what sacrifices they make to see their children happy. It doesn’t seem though that Hayden was trying to make a point by the scene alone but by the actions in which his father took to make sure things were ready that Sunday morning. The same thing could have been said about almost anything time or place, but the feeling still would have still conveyed his…

    • 759 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    ESSAY 1 ELEANOR LOUISE WILSON Mrs Kristan ENGLISH 101 09/29/15 In “Knock Knock” by Daniel Beaty the purpose of the poem is is to highlight the importance of a fatherly figure during a son’s childhood. This significance is portrayed throughout the text by the authors use of repetition of symbolic phrases “knock knock”, as well as the narrative of the story being portrayed through the eyes of a child giving us a clearer indication of how it must feel to grow up without a father. The author uses a letter half way through the text which further influences how crucial a fatherly role is in a son’s life specifically, as well as highlighting this through portraying the failed lessons the child in the narrative has missed out on.…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden and “My Father’s Song” by Simon J. Ortiz, there is love found within by a man’s memories of his childhood relationship with his Father. “Those Winter Sundays” is about a man who is remembering the relationship he had with his father through regret, because he realizes how unappreciative he was. “My Father’s Song” is a man reminiscing on the actions his father makes when showing him the value of life and how to grow up. Within both of these poems the father-son relationship does not show verbal communication. In “Those Winter Sundays,” this lack of communication helps indicate the distance between the two, whereas the communication breakdown in “My Father’s Song” reflects the connection that the two…

    • 2056 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    While “My Papa’s Waltz” and “Those Winter Sundays” differ in the attitudes and tones of their speakers, they are alike in the complex family relationships and themes of familial love, masculinity and sacrifice, and nostalgic youth that they communicate to the reader. A close-reading of the poems, with special attention paid to the speakers and the ideas they are trying to get across, can end up telling far more about Theodore Roethke and Robert Hayden than they may like. The speaker in “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke is a small boy having a grand old time waltzing with his father in the kitchen before bed. His father is a little rough with him, keeping time on his noggin and accidently scraping his ear against his belt buckle on every…

    • 994 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Once wisely said, ‘’Being a family means you are a part of something very wonderful. It means to love and be loved for the rest of your life no matter what.” In many families, the father takes pride in receiving remarks regarding their son. Heaney had seen the hardship in physical labor. Heaney observed his father at work when he was younger, until the death of both of his parents.…

    • 713 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Powder In the short story “Powder”, the theme love is portrayed the most through deep connections between father and son. These two characters alone express bond that love can create between families. A father and son begin to drive through the snow storm until they are stopped at a road block by an officer. Love is first shown when the father stops to tell the son that they have to make it back in time for dinner so that the mom won’t feel let down once again as she has been lately.…

    • 783 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics