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Alliteration In Those Winter Sundays

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Alliteration In Those Winter Sundays
In the poem “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, Robert Hayden shows the speaker’s regrets for not recognizing his father’s love during his childhood.

In the first stanza, the speaker introduces his father. Beginning with “Sundays too my father got up early,” “Sundays too” suggests that the father woke up early even on Sundays to help his family (line 1). Then, the words the speaker use to describe his father makes an imagery of the father having a harsh life. The speaker describes his father’s back “blueblack cold,” and his hands as “cracked hands that ached / from labor,” which also implies the father does physical labor for work (2, 3-4). Thus, the speaker uses alliteration to show the harshness of his father’s life, choosing “cold,” “cracked,” and “ached” and implies that the family is poor due to the father’s low quality work (2, 3, 3). Afterward, the speakers says at the end “No one ever thanked him,” making the readers to notice the speaker’s grief for not noticing father’s sacrifice (5).
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The father calling the speaker to wake up “when the rooms were warm” while he woke up when the house was cold again emphasizes the father’s love and his sacrifice for the speaker (7). Then, the poem illustrates a powerful personification with the phrase “fearing the chronic angers of that house” (9). The “chronic angers” symbolizes the anger of the father would express to times in the house due to his low socioeconomic status (9). Thus, the readers recognize that it might have been possible that the speaker did not have a friendly relationship with his father, which is also seen in the speaker’s language when he says “father,” instead of saying “dad” (1). The poor relationship the speaker had with his father adds on to his regret during his

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