Those Winter Sundays Literary Devices

A father’s love for his son is not always seen. In the poem, “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, the narrator is talking about how he regrets not realizing and thanking his father for all the suffering and good that his father has done for him. The author uses imagery and diction to portray a better image about the narrator's regret for not noticing his father’s good deeds sooner. One of the more commonly used literary element in the poem “Those Winter Sundays” is imagery. The author uses imagery to emphasize the regrets that the speaker has about his father. In the first stanza the speaker talks about how the father worked hard for his family. The speaker starts off by pointing out that his father went out into the “blueblack cold.” “Blueblack” creates an image of darkness. This shows that it was still early in the morning, which means it was dark and cold outside. Also, the speaker describes the hardships that the father went through for him when he says, “...with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.” The father has a physically demanding job during the week, and during the weekdays he worked tirelessly for his son so he would not freeze. Although the father did all this, nobody showed …show more content…
The author uses diction also to illustrate the speaker’s feelings of regret. In the first stanza the author says, “Sundays too my father got up early,” which shows that the father even works on the day that most people rest. The word “too” shows that the father woke up early every other day of the week, even on Sunday. “No one ever thanked him” seems to point at the regret the speaker feels for his actions. The use of past tense in the word “thanked” shows that he is looking back to something in his life. Later in the speaker’s life, he was aware that his father should have been appreciated, but not during the time the events took