Paraphrase Entire Poem Those Winter Sundays By Robert Hayden

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Paraphrase Entire Poem
My father also got up early on Sundays and got dressed in the dark of the cold winter morning, then using his damaged hands that were sore from working in the winter weather he built a large fire. No one showed gratitude to him.
I would wake up to the cold cracking of the radiator. My father would call me after the house was finally warm and I would get up and change my clothes because I feared him becoming angry.
I only made small talk with him, the man who kept me warm and cleaned my good shoes. I did not understand, I did not understand the lonely duties and sacrifice of love.

Persona, Characters, and Setting
The persona of the poem “Those Winter Sundays” is likely the author, Robert Hayden, who is writing about …show more content…

The use of these words in their plural form suggests that this memory is the routine on Sunday mornings. Two major themes are love and sacrifice. The father loves his family, but the only way he knows how to show it is through personal sacrifice. He climbs out of his warm bed and braves the freezing cold every morning of the winter to warm the house so his family get up comfortably. He suffers through cracked and achy hands from working in the harsh outdoor weather during the week to provide for his family’s needs. The author is also very reflective of how he treated his father. It is not until he looks back at this memory that he truly understands how much his father loved him and finally recognizes how much he sacrificed to prove it. At this point he regrets continually speaking to him in a distant manner as well as neglecting to thank him. If anything he may have feared his father as a child as shown when he gets out of bed quickly “fearing the chronic angers of that house”. This gives the impression that the father may have a bit of a temper, possibly because he sees all of his hard work was going unnoticed leading him to feels unappreciated by his family. The central idea of guilt is best seen in the last stanza when he admits his indifference to his father and questions what he knew about his love and

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