Love and Regret: Analyzing 'Those Winter Sundays'

Many people don’t recognize others’ expressions of love. For instance, children may not realize that simple actions made by their parents are their parents’ way of saying “I love you.” In the poem, “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden describes an adult who regrets not appreciating his father as a child, and who now has a better understanding of the challenging and occasionally lonely responsibilities of a parent. The way in which Hayden describes the father’s and the narrator’s actions, his use of K and hard C words, and his portrayal of love in the last line of the poem illuminate Hayden’s message that parents will do and sacrifice anything for their children out of love and, therefore, one should take time to appreciate them.

The descriptions of the father’s and the speaker’s actions elucidate

In the first stanza, Hayden describes the father’s morning; the father “got up early” and “put his clothes on.” (1-2) Then, later in the second stanza when describing the son’s morning, Hayden uses the words “rise” and “dress” (8). Although the father and son perform identical actions, the descriptions of those actions are completely different. While “got up early” and “put his clothes on” are common phrases people use daily, “rise” and “dress” sound more graceful and perhaps more educated. The difference in the description of the father’s morning versus the speaker’s morning allude to the idea that the son has a better or easier life than the father. In the third stanza, Hayden wrote, “Speaking indifferently to him, / who had driven out the cold / and polished my good shoes” (10-12). These lines give the reader insight in regards to the narrator’s perception of his father as a child and his perceptions now as an adult. Hayden allows one to infer the narrator’s feelings as a child towards his father by the way the narrator speaks to him – indifferently. The narrator did not think much of his