those winter sundays essay - Arron Tanasale Professor Manos...

Arron Tanasale
Professor Manos
English 102
April 1, 2015
Those Winter Sundays ( )
The poem “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden is about a man’s adolescent
memory of his relationship with his father. The poem doesn’t state the sex of the narrator, but it
is believed to be the author’s voice. The poem illustrates how the narrator is regretful for not
appreciating his father’s care when he was younger. The narrator explains how his father woke
up on Sundays to warm up the house despite his intense work week. The poem addresses the
elemental love of a father and child despite hardship. The author uses various elements of
poetry to convey the theme of love and regret in the poem.
The poem begins with the line “Sundays too my father got up early”. This line suggest
how the father woke up early every day of the week including Sunday because the word “too” is
used. Although, Sunday is traditionally a day of rest in America the father treated it like any
other day. The author uses winter imagery to represent his cold heart toward his father. The
second line, the memory of the "blueblack cold"(2) imagery of the winter is used. The father
gets up when the sky is still blue and black. These colors are seen in the sky just before sunrise.
He also gives us the temperature with the word “cold”. The author uses imagery to give a feeling
of brisk cold when he uses the consonance “blueblack” to explain how cold it is. The words
"blueblack" and "labor" also signify the father’s low economic status.
The lines “Then with cracked hands that ached/ From labor in the weekday weather
made/ Banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him” (3-5) depicts the father’s rough life. The

father’s hands are “cracked” signifying that he does manual labor during the week. The author