Those Winter Sundays Essay

665 Words2 Pages

As one gets older, their insight on life widens and gives them realization of things that seemed to not matter in life have great importance. The poem “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden illustrates a son reminiscing of his childhood when he is older. The readers can see the small acts the main character's father did never proved to be anything special to the son when he was younger, but when he grew up he realized that the small things exemplified his love for his family. Hayden’s diction and detail emphasizes the sons regret of never understanding his father until he got older.
Hayden first uses diction to portray the father’s life to be one filled with hardships and struggles. By implementing words such as “ cracked,” “ached,” and ‘cold” …show more content…

The author includes “ who had driven out the cold” as a role of a father who protects. Even though tension can be found in the father and sons relationship, it seems like the father drove out all the trouble that came into the house not only the cold. In this portion of the poem the speaker is mentioning the good things he did. The readers can infer the father guarding the son from reality and the true harshness of life. He made sure his family never experienced the cold like he did every single day when he went to work. The son never experienced the brutality of coldness because everyday when he woke up “the rooms were warm.” This symbolized the father's dedication to his duty as a parent. Haydon states the reader asking “ What did I know? Of love's austere and lonely office?” In this line the father seems to symbolize love. Even though the father lead a harsh life and was “lonely” waking up every morning to work, he did it out of love for his family. His duty of being a good father drove him to wake up before any of his family did and warm up the house so they wouldn’t have to face the same difficulties as him. The main speaker of this poem didn’t understand this as he was a child but as he remembers his past hits a point of realization that every little thing his father did was for him to have a good

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