Those Winter Sundays By Robert Hayden
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden looks like a simple poem, but when the reader dives deeper into the words he or she can easily see the theme of this poem is something much deeper and more personally connected to the speaker’s feelings and thoughts. The speaker is an adult, most likely a man, looking back on his childhood. As he remembers the events that took place inside his home with his family, he begins to realize how much his father did for not only himself, but his family. As an adult, the man realizes how hard and unselfishly his father worked to provide for the family; but as the speaker tells of his father’s endeavors he realizes that his actions as child were unappreciative of his father’s hard. The theme of Hayden’s poem is
that love, and the actions done to show it, is not always appreciated until it is no longer around. Hayden’s intricate language, along with many different poetic devices, are used to develop the theme. Even though the poem doesn’t have two different stanzas, it can be broke up into two different parts. The first half of the poem, lines one through five, the poet explains what his father’s actions were. The poems first line, “Sundays too my father got up early” begins the poem with simplicity, but it also plays a crucial part in developing the theme of the poem. Sundays are looked on as a holy day of rest in Christianity, this shows that the father got up not only throughout the week but also on the day of rest to provide for the needs of the family. The image of his father getting up early to start his day is described with vivid words such as “blueblack” (line 2). Hayden’s use of this uncommon word as an adjective to help give the audience the mental image of the cold morning to be more harsh and threatening. The father’s dedication is illustrated in line three by the words “cracked hands that ached”. These words are an example of the figures of speech Hayden uses to help the reader picture the actions within in the poem. In this case imagery is used; imagery is the name given to the elements in a poem that spark off the senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell).
The second half of the poem, lines six through fourteen, Hayden tells of his actions towards his father when he was a child.
that love, and the actions done to show it, is not always appreciated until it is no longer around. Hayden’s intricate language, along with many different poetic devices, are used to develop the theme. Even though the poem doesn’t have two different stanzas, it can be broke up into two different parts. The first half of the poem, lines one through five, the poet explains what his father’s actions were. The poems first line, “Sundays too my father got up early” begins the poem with simplicity, but it also plays a crucial part in developing the theme of the poem. Sundays are looked on as a holy day of rest in Christianity, this shows that the father got up not only throughout the week but also on the day of rest to provide for the needs of the family. The image of his father getting up early to start his day is described with vivid words such as “blueblack” (line 2). Hayden’s use of this uncommon word as an adjective to help give the audience the mental image of the cold morning to be more harsh and threatening. The father’s dedication is illustrated in line three by the words “cracked hands that ached”. These words are an example of the figures of speech Hayden uses to help the reader picture the actions within in the poem. In this case imagery is used; imagery is the name given to the elements in a poem that spark off the senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell).
The second half of the poem, lines six through fourteen, Hayden tells of his actions towards his father when he was a child.