Those Winter Sundays

I think it’s safe to say that children do not always appreciate their parents. I, for one, am certain I took mine for granted, sometimes, as a child. Ungratefulness is a condition that none of us are immune to. This is the primary focus of “Those Winter Sundays”, by Robert Hayden. “Those Winter Sundays” tells a story of a regretful son, while incorporating vivid imagery to capture the attention of the reader.

                There are many clues that unveil the regretful and somber tone of this poem. For example the poem is in past tense, so we know that the speaker is reminiscing about something in the past. The word choice drops some hints to the nature of the poem as well. The first sentence, for example, states “Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold” (Hayden, lines 1-2). “Sundays too” implies that the father got up early every day, and was probably absent most of the time; “blueblack cold” gives off a sense of seriousness. The sentence stating, “No one ever thanked him” (Hayden, line 5) reveals a feeling of regret as well, because the speaker knows that his father should have been thanked for his efforts.

                In lines 10-12, the speaker tells of “Speaking indifferently to him,/who had driven out the cold/and polished my good shoes as well” (Hayden 10-12). Why would the child speak to his father with indifference? Most likely the child was un-appreciative and felt as if that was what the father was supposed to do; it was expected. We can tell that the speaker feels differently now, and knows that he was wrong to speak in that way because he addresses the good things his father did for him (i.e., making the house warm, and polishing his shoes), proving that he sees a new significance in these actions that he had previously overlooked.

                This observation is further solidified with the following lines, which state, “What did I know, what did I know/of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (Hayden, lines 13-14). This sentence contains a lot of meaning. It sums up the theme of the entire poem, which is that the speaker was un-grateful as a child, and didn’t understand that different people show love, or affection, in different ways. From this sentence, we gain the understanding that the speaker must have felt un-loved as a child because he did not receive his idea of affection, but he now realizes that by making sure the house was warm when he got up, and polishing his shoes, his father was displaying a love for his child.

                Aside from simply telling a story, “Those Winter Sundays” contains multiple examples of imagery, which capture the attention of the reader. Imagery is the language of the five senses, in other words, language that describes either, sight, hearing, taste, touch, or smell. Some examples of imagery in the poem are “blueblack cold”, “…fires blaze”, “I’d…hear the cold splintering, breaking” etc. (Hayden 255). These examples incorporate some of our senses such as sight, hearing, and touch, and serve to draw the reader further into the poem so that they are not only reading the words, but feeling them too.