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Comment on the theme of the poem and how the structure supports the poem those winter sundays by Robert Hayden
Comment on the theme of the poem and how the structure supports the poem those winter sundays by Robert Hayden
Those winter Sundays Robert Hayden literary essay
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Kevin Moore
Professor Jackson
ENGL 102
14 September 2017
Contrasting Imagery in Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays”
Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” is a “lyric on a universal theme-an adult speaker reassessing feeling about a parent” (Moore 56). Through studying the evolution of imagery from the start to finish of a poem we can learn to better understand the meaning (Kennedy, Gioia and Revoyr 61). In “Those Winter Sundays”, Hayden uses contrasting and changing imagery to further communicate the change in understanding the child has for their Father.
Hayden’s poem opens with the speaker introducing their Father and associating him with cold feelings. He then goes on to use imagery to help define the relationship between the speaker
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While the poem starts out cold, by the middle of the first, and through the second stanzas the speaker is recalling the father’s actions and associating them with warm imagery. “The image of the fire…begins the progression from dark and cold to light and warm” (Napierkowski and Ruby 301). The image of the blazing fire is strengthened by the literal warming of the room, but is in direct contrast to the “fearing the chronic angers…” (9) that necessitates “indifferent” speech toward the father (Gallagher 246).
The complex and mixed relation the speaker and their father have is underscored in the third stanza by recognizing the indifferent, distant relationship the speaker had with their father and contrasting it with warm images of the father having “…driven out the cold / and polished my good shoes as well.” (11-12). The image of the warm fire driving out the cold is paired with an image of servitude, the father polishing his child’s good shoes (Napierkowski and Ruby 301). Now, the speaker has come from seeing the cold, weathered, angry father and begun to fully appreciate the sacrifice of his
The poem, A Story, is written in the third person point of view. Thereby, allowing the audience to grasp onto the sentimental emotions of the father. The story begins with the depiction of the father as a “sad...man who is asked
“Those Winter Sundays” tells of Robert Hayden’s father and the cold mornings his father endures to keep his family warm in the winters. In “Digging” Heaney is sitting in the window watching his father do hard manual labor, which has taken a toll on his body. In “My Father as a Guitar” Espada goes to the doctors office with his father and is sitting in the office with his dad when the doctor tells him he has to take pain killers and to stop working because his body was growing old and weak. The authors of the poems all look at their fathers the same; they look at them with much respect and gratitude. All three poems tell of the hard work the dads have to do to keep their family fed and clothed. “The landlord, here a symbol of all the mainstream social institutions that hold authority over the working class” (Constantakis.) Espada’s father is growing old and his health is deteriorating quickly but his ability to stop working is not in his own hands, “I can’t the landlord won’t let me” (774.) “He is separated from the homeland, and his life in the United States is far from welcoming” (Constantakis.) Espada’s Grandmother dies in Puerto Rico and the family learns this by a lett...
The events of our childhood and interactions with our parents is an outline of our views as parents ourselves. Although Robert Hayden’s relationship with his father differentiates from the relationship of Theodore Roethke and his father, they are both pondering back to their childhood and expressing the events in a poem. “My Papa’s Waltz” and “Those winter Sundays” provide the reader with an image of a childhood event which states how fathers are being viewed by their children. These poems reflect upon the relationship of the father and child when the child was a youth. Both Roethke and Hayden both indicate that their fathers weren’t perfect although they look back admiringly at their fathers’ actions. To most individuals, a father is a man that spends time with and takes care of them which gains him love and respect. An episode of Roethke’s childhood is illustrated in “My Papa’s Waltz”. In “My Papa’s Waltz”, the father comes home showing signs of alcohol and then begins waltzing with his son. Roethke states that the father’s hands are “battered on one knuckle”. The mother was so upset about the dancing that she did nothing other than frown. At the end of the day, the father waltzed the son to bed. “Those Winter Sundays” is based on a regular Sunday morning. The father rises early to wake his family and warm the house. To warm the house, he goes out in the cold and splits wood to start a fire. This is a poem about an older boy looking back to his childhood and regretting that “No one ever thanked him.” In Those Winter Sundays'; by Robert Hayden, the poet also relinquishes on a regular occurrence in his childhood. On Sunday mornings, just as any other morning, his father rises early and puts on his clothes in the cold darkness. He ...
If I were asked who the most precious people in my life are, I would undoubtedly answer: my family. They were the people whom I could lean on to matter what happens. Nonetheless, after overhearing my mother demanded a divorce, I could not love her as much as how I loved her once because she had crushed my belief on how perfect life was when I had a family. I felt as if she did not love me anymore. Poets like Philip Levine and Robert Hayden understand this feeling and depict it in their poems “What Work Is” and “Those Winter Sundays.” These poems convey how it feels like to not feel love from the family that should have loved us more than anything in the world. Yet, they also convey the reconciliation that these family members finally reach because the speakers can eventually see love, the fundamental component of every family in the world, which is always presence, indeed. Just like I finally comprehended the reason behind my mother’s decision was to protect me from living in poverty after my father lost his job.
father’s childhood, and later in the poem we learn that this contemplation is more specifically
The poem “Those Winter Sundays” displays a past relationship between a child and his father. Hayden makes use of past tense phrases such as “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking” (6) to show the readers that the child is remembering certain events that took place in the past. Although the child’s father did not openly express his love towards him when he was growing up, the child now feels a great amount of guilt for never thanking his father for all the things he actually did for him and his family. This poem proves that love can come in more than one form, and it is not always a completely obvious act.
The poem is written in the father’s point of view; this gives insight of the father’s character and
In terms of Romanticism, the idea of transcendence seems to be present in the poem in regard to the fact that the father-son relationship is beyond words. The relationship exists, but it is difficult to articulate. Also the idea that Hayden is rising to a deeper understanding of his relationship with his father is present. There are lines in the poem that state:
His ungratefulness as a child has now emerged on him, leaving the speaker ashamed of taking his father’s hard work for granted. In this poem he writes, “…fearing the chronic angers of that house//Speaking indifferently to him/who had driven out the cold…” (Hayden, 17). When he quotes “fearing chronic angers”, the speaker refers to his view of life as a child, and how he interpreted his father’s agony and self-sacrifice as anger towards him. With an apathetic and cold attitude that accompanied his youth, he did not recognize the love that his father had for him. Hayden also writes, “What did I know, What did I know…” (Hayden 17). Repeating this rhetorical question twice it is obvious that the speaker, now as an adult, feels deep remorse over the way he had treated his father. With a matured mind, Hayden came to the realization that love comes in all shapes and forms, and his father’s love was shown through his selfless
The boy comprehends the severity of the situations he is faced with, such as lack of food or water, and treats his father with the same respect and equality that the man gives him. He insists on sharing his portions with his father when they are uneven, and he remains cautious at all times, even when his father is not. The boy’s fire is fueled by his love for his father, which is shown by the boy’s priority on caring for his father’s wellbeing, just as the man does for him. This love and responsibility, manifesting in the form of self-sacrifice and compassion, lies in direct juxtaposition to the rest of the world, where selfishness and indifference reigns
The diction helps exemplify the imagery even better, the reader can sense how the speaker’s home felt like as well as the father’s hard work. The speaker awakens to the "splintering, breaking" of the coldness. This allows the audience to feel a sense of how cold it was in the speaker’s house. One can infer that the poem is set in a cold city or town during the winter, which gives the reader an idea of how cold it might be. “Slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house,” represents how the father battles to keep the family away from harm of the cold and darkness, implying that the speaker grew up in poverty. His father’s “cracked hands” shows how hard his father worked to keep his family safe.
While most of us think back to memories of our childhood and our relationships with our parents, we all have what he would call defining moments in our views of motherhood or fatherhood. It is clearly evident that both Theodore Roethke and Robert Hayden have much to say about the roles of fathers in their two poems as well. While the relationships with their fathers differ somewhat, both men are thinking back to a defining moment in their childhood and remembering it with a poem. "My Papa's Waltz" and "Those Winter Sundays" both give the reader a snapshot view of one defining moment in their childhood, and these moments speak about the way these children view their fathers. Told now years later, they understand even more about these moments.
The simultaneous distance and closeness within the relationship between the father and the child are inevitable even in the most tragic and happy events in life. The poems “Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad” by Jan Heller Levi and “In the Well” by Andrew Hudgins are both about the closeness and distance in a father and child relationship. Both poems are written in first person, or in the child’s point of view to emphasize the thoughts of distance and the experience of childhood thinking to the readers. The poems both use similar literary devices such as motifs and imagery to illustrate and accentuate the ideas of each event that the narrator, a child, experiences. Similarities between both poems are the use of water as a motif of the barrier to being farther away from the father, and the use of different synonyms for the word, father, to indicate the amount of distance at each point in the poems. On the other hand, each poem takes its route of distance in completely opposite directions. “Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad” by Jan Heller Levi and “In the Well” by Andrew Hudgins accommodate the similarities for the use of the same motif, water, and the use of several synonyms for “dad” throughout the poems, but also differentiate because they proceed in opposite directions from the beginning to the end.
Throughout Hayden’s poem, he create interest in his poem by using consonance, imagery, and rhyme scheme to create the theme about him reflecting his relationship with his father. Hayden’s poem was very interesting because of the way he used consonance to gain his readers attention. “Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hand that ached”( Hayden 1-3), shows how many consonances Hayden used to draw his readers attention and to emphasize how he felt about his relationship with father in his childhood. Hayden always used an example of consonance to describe to emphasize to his readers how early his father used to wake up on a Sunday. Also, the consonance shows that there is some pain in Hayden words about his feelings about his father waking up early, even when
Many writers use powerful words to portray powerful messages. Whether a writer’s choice of diction is cheerful, bitter, or in Robert Hayden’s case in his poem “Those Winter Sundays,” dismal and painful, it is the diction that formulates the tone of the piece. It is the diction which Hayden so properly places that allows us to read the poem and picture the cold tension of his foster home, and envision the barren home where his poem’s inspiration comes from. Hayden’s tumultuous childhood, along with the unorthodox relationships with his biological parents and foster parents help him to create the strong diction that permeates the dismal tone of “Those Winter Sundays.” Hayden’s ability to both overcome his tribulations and generate enough courage