Essay On Those Winter Sundays

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“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden is a touching poem describing a remorseful father and child relationship. Not only does the author show a heartwarming theme, but also exemplifies pain within a connection that is long gone. This relation is between the narrator and his father,a hardworking man, who did anything and everything for his family, even though he never got the love he deserved from them.

This poem showcases the looking back upon a father who deserved much more love in return for his caring actions.We can associate that this poem looks into the past because of certain saying such as “No one ever thanked him”. Speaking about this line, in the beginning of the poem the author gives a clear explanation that the father would get up even on sundays, and work to keep his family warm in hard cold weather conditions. …show more content…

The narrator starts to regret his language towards his father even though he did so much for him. This is seen in the lines “Speaking indifferently to him, who’d driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well”. This is followed by the lines “What did I know, what did I know”, showcasing how he knew no better as a young child. He was blind to his father's motivation and love, which he just realises as an adult. The authors use of repetition in these lines acts as a tremble in the narrator's voice, adding so much depth and emotion to the progressing feelings of the poem. This leads us to the last and most complex line of the poem of “love’s austere and lonely offices?” The narrator didn't understand his lack of empathy and compassion towards his father explaining the use of the words “love's austere” or lonely love that his father experienced. This is felt within the “lonely offices”, a phrase that can be seen as an allegory explaining that his father's love was a duty in his son's office that was never

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