Those Winter Sundays "Those Winter Sundays" is a very touching poem. It is written by Robert Hayden who has written many other poems. This paper will talk about the poem "Those Winter Sundays". In particular we will look at the structure, main idea, and each stanza of the poem. "Those Winter Sundays" has a structure like many other poems. It is written in the first person notation. Often through the poem you would find yourself reading "I'd wake" and "I know". "Those Winter Sundays" has three stanzas that are separated with even white space. The first stanza consists of five lines followed by the second containing four lines and like the first stanza the last consists of five lines. Although the poem does not seem to rhyme it has a rhythm of its own. In this particular poem, Robert Hayden writes about the relationship of the speaker (child, who is now grown up) with his father. He captures the need of love from a distant father to the child but at the same time, the child admits to his own lack of empathy to his father. Hayden uses specific detail to show that the...
At the beginning of the poem, the audience is able to witness an event of a young boy asking his father for story. While the father was deemed a “sad” man, it is later shown that his sadness can be contributed to his fear of his son leaving him. The structure then correlated to the point of going into the future. The future was able to depict what would happen to the loving duo. The father's dreams would become a reality and the son's love and admiration would cease to exist as he is seen screaming at his father. Wanting nothing to do with him. The young, pure child can be seen trying to back lash at his father for acting like a “god” that he can “never disappoint.” The point of this structure was not really a means of clarification from the beginning point of view, but more as an intro to the end. The real relationship can be seen in line 20, where it is mentioned that the relationship between the father and son is “an emotional rather than logical equation.” The love between this father and son, and all its complexity has no real solution. But rather a means of love; the feelings a parent has for wanting to protect their child and the child itself wanting to be set free from their parents grasp. The structure alone is quite complex. Seeing the present time frame of the father and son
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:
In Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays”, a grown person, most likely a man, recounts the winter Sundays of his childhood and the sadness of lost opportunities to develop bonding ties between father and child. The man realizes that as a child he failed to appreciate the hard work his father did in order to provide the basic necessities. The word choice that Robert Hayden uses is not complex, which requires little effort to read and is easily understandable. However, if one were to explicate this poem, it proves to be a complex piece with a well-defined sentiment of the conflict between unrecognized love and regret. Hayden’s diction helps communicate the underlying tone of the story. Imagery plays a major role in this poem. The speaker, who
In the poem ¨My Father¨ by Scott Hightower, the author describes a rather unstable relationship with his now deceased father. Scott describes his father as a mix of both amazing and atrocious traits. The father is described as someone who constantly contradicts himself through his actions. He is never in between but either loving and heroic or cold and passive. The relationship between Scott and his father is shown to be always changing depending on the father’s mood towards him. He sees his father as the reason he now does certain things he finds bad. But at the end of it all, he owes a great deal to his father. Scott expresses that despite his flaws, his father helped shape the man he is today. Hightower uses certain diction, style, and imagery to
The central conflict in Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays”, is the unfortunate realization that the speaker never truly thanked or appreciated his father’s sacrifices when he was a child. After growing up, taking on responsibilities, and achieving a rehabilitated understanding of the world through experience, Hayden expresses his ingratitude that often accompanies with youth. The first line of the first stanza writes, “Sundays too my father got up early/and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold” (Hayden, 17). Out of these two lines, the word “too” is filled with importance because Sunday’s are dedicated to either religious practices, or rest for a working man. Fortunately, this was not his father’s case as his father would wake up early in order to perform his loving and self-sacrificing duties.
Father and son relationships are important in families. A father is not only a hard worker and provider for his family, but also a man that spends time with and takes care of his children. In Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, and in Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” are two poems that tell a story of the relationship between father and son. In these two poems, the reader takes a look back at how their fathers had treated them. Both parents were not perfect, their children had love and respect for them, and in contrast the two fathers had different approaches when treating their sons.
The differences between “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden and “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke poems is noticeable, and their similarities aren’t noticeable. Thus, Theodore Roethke and Robert Hayden describe the relationship a father and son and the way they communicate. Yet, these two relationships could not be more different. In the Roethke’s poem, the speaker had a strong and positive relationship with his father that couldn't be expressed as well as Hayden's relationship with his father. In fact, the fathers’ ability to communicate with their sons was physically, rather than verbally. Also, both poems use negative aspects, fatherly love, and understanding for their father. In Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” describes the
The concluding couplet, "what did I know/ of love's austere and lonely offices?” loops back to “No one ever thanked him”, in that his father did back breaking work and no one regarded his work. Austere means in a cold manner, while the word "offices" means duties. The speaker did not realize his father’s sacrifices until now, as an adult, and didn’t thank his father for his love. The title is a good fit for the poem because the entirety of the poem is about Sundays in winter during the speaker’s childhood. The poem is composed of three stanzas of f...
There is no greater bond then a boy and his father, the significant importance of having a father through your young life can help mold you to who you want to become without having emotional distraught or the fear of being neglected. This poem shows the importance in between the lines of how much love is deeply rooted between these two. In a boys life he must look up to his father as a mentor and his best friend, the father teaches the son as much as he can throughout his experience in life and build a strong relationship along the way. As the boy grows up after learning everything his father has taught him, he can provide help for his father at his old-age if problems were to come up in each others
Scott Hightower’s poem “Father” could be very confusing to interpret. Throughout almost the entirety of the poem the speaker tries to define who his father is by comparing him to various things. As the poem begins the reader is provided with the information that the father “was” all of these things this things that he is being compared to. The constant use of the word “was” gets the reader to think ‘how come the speaker’s father is no longer comparable to these things?’ After the speaker reveals that his father is no longer around, he describes how his father impacted him. Details about the father as well as descriptions of the impacts the father has distraught on the speaker are all presented in metaphors. The repetitive pattern concerning the speaker’s father and the constant use of metaphors gives the reader a sense that the speaker possesses an obsessive trait. As the reader tries to interpret the seemingly endless amount of metaphors, sets of connotative image banks begin to develop in the reader’s mind. Major concepts that are expressed throughout the poem are ideas about what the speaker’s father was like, what he meant to the speaker, and how he influenced the speaker.
The author uses imagery, contrasting diction, tones, and symbols in the poem to show two very different sides of the parent-child relationship. The poem’s theme is that even though parents and teenagers may have their disagreements, there is still an underlying love that binds the family together and helps them bridge their gap that is between them.
The poem was set in the past of the writer; it’s even represented in the title, “Those Winter Sundays.” The poet goes on to say that “No one ever thanked him.” The writer viewed his father as an all-business type of man and an angry man, but he didn’t look at why his father did what he did, nor did he ever thank him for providing for him. Hayden doesn’t see this as an intentional overlook. He sees it as himself being a child and not understanding. Then when he says, “What did I know, What did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (13-14 Hayden) The author really goes deep into how he spoke to his father “Speaking indifferently to him.”(10 Hayden) Hayden has a deep emotional regret for not being appreciative of his father’s
In his poem, “My Papa’s Waltz,” Theodore Roethke, an award-winning and critically acclaimed poet, emphasizes the strong bond between a father and his son by describing a drunken father dancing in the kitchen with his young son. Unfortunately, when Roethke was only fourteen, his father passed away from cancer and his uncle committed suicide. Although these events are tragic, they impacted Roethke deeply and influenced his works, especially “My Papa’s Waltz” (CITE). Through his use of diction, style, and imagery in “My Papa’s Waltz,” Roethke effectively supports the theme of a child’s admiration for his parents.
Dan Brown rightly said that no love is greater than that of a father and a son. It’s not just flesh and mind but the hearts that connect a father and a son. “My papa’s Waltz”, by Theodore Roethke and “Those Winter Sundays”, by Robert Hayden, both describe the relationship between a father and a son. These poems share a common idea of revealing the relationship that the speakers share with their fathers and the poems simultaneously, offer a means of discovering and interpreting the setting, tone and theme among other elemental aspects of poetry. The poems seem a lot different, however they are alike in many significant ways. Both the poems swing around the different childhood memories of the speakers, yet show how love crosses all the borders of bitterness.