Imagery In Those Winter Sundays

The speaker in the poem, “Those Winter Sundays”, by Robert Hayden, reveals both his loving and regretful feelings about his father by using symbolization, diction, and a regretful, “if only” tone, which are all reflected by the “angry home”. Hayden uses symbolization to convey the child’s feelings for the father. The speaker would “rise and dress,/ fearing the chronic angers of that house.” The reader can imagine a child nervously getting out of bed to see his or her father. The bed is a symbol of escape in the poem, because it was the child’s only place they could hide from the home he or she feared. The angry house symbolizes an angry relationship inside the house, most likely between the mother and father. This limited the chance of a good relationship between them. The child is scared of putting in effort because interfering with the “angry house” could make the situation worse. This is why the child stayed in bed. The father would also have “cracked hands that ached”. The father worked extremely hard, which shows that he loved the child. If he didn’t, then he wouldn’t have worked so hard. But his hands symbolized the relationship between them: cracked and broken. Even though
the child feels love for the father, there is a limit because of the “angry house”. There is a correlation between the diction the author used and the connotations of said words, which related to the emotions of the reader.
The “blueblack cold”, “cracked hands”, and “splintering, breaking” cold all have very sharp consonants. The connotations of these words are all negative, sad, and chilling. These all relate to the child’s feelings at that time. These words made the reader feel sad and negative, especially when coming from the angry house. Since the father did all of the hard work outside during the winter, the child felt regretful. The child wanted to help, but felt like there was a limit to which he or she could help because of the house. Their relationship wasn’t close enough for the child to go and help outside, or even ask for help, which made the child
regretful. There is a strong, “if only” tone presented in the text, which relates to the child’s feelings when both the child and father got older. The child says, “what did I know, what did I know/ of love’s austere and lonely offices?” This implies that the child regrets not having a closer relationship with his or her father. If the relationship would have been stronger, then the child feels they both would be happier, both then and now. For what his father did every day, “no one ever thanked him.” This implies that if the speaker would have been more thankful for the father, then he or she wouldn’t be so regretful of the past. By the text, the speaker thinks that the consequences of the past directly correlate to the weak relationship with his or her father. The child feels that “if only” he or she had pushed away the nerves created by the angry house and the weak present relationship with the father, then the child would have had a better childhood, thus happier and more positive feelings for the father. The text reveals that the emotions of the speaker about his father are regretful, but still loving, by the use of symbolization, diction, and tone. The angry home was also put into play with these devices by limiting the relationship possible. These help decipher the theme of the story. Always be thankful and loving, because you’ll regret it someday when you don’t have the chance to be thankful anymore.