Diction In Those Winter Sundays By Robert Hayden

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

As an infant, his biological father fled from Hayden and his mother, and at eighteen months, Hayden’s biological mother abandoned him as well, in hopes of “pursuing a stage career in a different state” (Feast 1-5). She handed Robert Hayden over to the next door neighbors, the Haydens, and left without any consideration; however, she moved back to Detroit and would make random frequent reappearances as an attempt to be a part of the Hayden’s life (Feast 1-5). As he grew, the reappearances and disappearances granted nothing but confusion and sadness for him (Feast 1-5). Hayden’s foster mother and biological mother were constantly fighting over him, and as Kelman states, “vi[ed] for his attention” (1016). With Hayden’s best interest in mind, his foster mother attempted to rid his life of the unhealthy and unstable relationship with his biological mother by having his name legally changed to “Robert Earl Hayden” (Kelman 1016). What originated as a kind gesture from his foster mother’s heart quickly sprouted from consolation into a greedy desire for praise. Although Hayden was grateful, his foster mother would not only constantly remind him of the deeds she had done but also constantly force him to thank her repeatedly for them, almost as if she were seeking his praise (Kelman 1016). While his mother received some sort of ecstasy by demanding Hayden’s

In Hayden’s poem “The Whippings,” the readers are given a more direct vision of what Hayden experienced at the hand of his foster mother. Hayden writes the poem in third person as he reminisces about how his mother “strikes and strikes the shrilly circling boy till the stick breaks,” and how “his tears are rainy weather to wound like memories” (The Whipping 1). He then ends the poem with by saying “… and the woman leans muttering against a tree, exhausted, purged—avenged in part for life long hidings she has to bear” (The Whipping 1). We see through the eyes of Hayden himself, that his foster mother would go far beyond a simple disciplinary punishment. Instead, she beat him in order to release her own frustrations for the demons in her life. Her actions filled Hayden’s childhood memories with pain and sorrow, and we see that through his own recollections in “The Whippings,” and “Those Winter Sundays” alike. In the poem “Those Winter Sundays,” Hayden’s choices in diction like the words “cracked,” and “ached” initiate the gloomy tone of the poem, and reflect the pain that derived from his relationship with his foster mother, which also could be a reason for the purposeful absence of Hayden’s foster mother in the poem (Howells 288-289). The reader also interprets that Hayden’s painful memories of being beaten and tormented as part of the unspecified “chronic angers” that haunt