Usher 1 Dean Usher Ms Lisa Kyle ENGL1025 08/05/20 Literary Analysis of Those Winter Sundays The poem, “Those Winter Sundays” written by Robert Hayden is a beautiful, simple, and well-versed poem that speaks of a father-son relationship. The speaker used flashbacks, and imagery to paint a vivid picture of what his childhood was like, and the many things he overlooked as a child, with one of those main things being his father’s love for him. In verse two of the poem, the lines "fearing the chronic anger of that house", and "speaking indifferently to him” showed that there was tension in their relationship, and lack of communication. The use of the more formal, less affectionate word “Father” instead of “Dad, or pa” also reflects that cold relationship between them. However, looking back at it from an adult perspective, the speaker was able to realize that he was an ungrateful child who could not see that his fathers' sacrifices were also symbols of love. The lines: “No one ever thanked him”, “What did I know?” What did I know of love austere and lonely offices?” showed how deeply he regrets not acknowledging his father's sacrifices that were all for the greater good of him. The use of this rhetorical question in the last stanza of the poem emphasized the speaker’s sadness. In continuation, the term “lonely offices” in the rhetorical question denotes the life of parenthood. It implies that the life of parents revolves around taking care of their children, but Usher 2 unfortunately as a child, we are not able to comprehend this love. The way the speaker wrote the poem was in an open form with no rhyme scheme, but each stanza captured a different emotion that helps to build the theme of love and regret. Other devices such as consonant sounds, in the word "cold, cracked and ached" added imagery of what the father’s sacrifice and pain felt like. It was not an easy task being a parent, and the father fatigue could have been easily misinterpreted in a bad way by his son. Remember, the speaker said a line, “fearing the chronic anger of that house”, that chronic anger could have been the fathers’ exhaustion and fatigues. The speaker also used alliteration, metaphor, and synesthesia to give life and meaning to the poem. Alliteration was used in the line “What did I know, what did I know” to show how sorrowful he was for not knowing how to be more appreciative of his father. The metaphor was used in the line, “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking”, and here the speaker is comparing delicate snow to a hard solid object that can break (Spacey, 2020). Lastly the use of synesthesia was present throughout the entire poem, but mostly, in the second line. For example, “And put his clothes on in the blue-black cold." He uses colour to describe a feeling. In conclusion, “Those Winter Sundays” written by Robert Hayden is a wonderful poem because it speaks reality. The use of rhetorical devices and the structure of the poem helps the readers to visualize and connect the story it is telling. Usher 3 Reference Spacey, A. (2020, January 8). https://owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-Those-WinterSundays-by-RobertHayden#:~:text=Those%20Winter%20Sundays%20is%20a,a%20hard%20working%20p arent%2C%20made. Retrieved from Those Winter Sundays.
