Those Winter Sundays

Garrett A. Gooch Gooch 1
Ms. Sara E. Lamers
Communication 1103
17November2005
An Analysis
Abuse is a difficult and sensitive subject that can have long lasting effects. These traumatic emotional effects are often intensified if the abuse happens at a young age because children do not understand why the abuse is happening or how to deal with it. Even more, poets and writers all over the world contribute works that express the saddening events and force the public to realize it is much more real than the informative articles we read about. One such poem is Robert Hayden's Those Winter Sundays which is a poem from the perspective of a young adult reflecting back on the childhood relationship with his father and the abuse his father inflicted. Another such poem is Theodore Roethke's" My Papa's Waltz" which looks carefully through the eyes of a young boy into the actions, of an abusive father. These poems are important because they deal with the complex issues surrounding the subject of abuse and also show the different ways which children react to it. "Those Winter Sundays" and "My Papa's Waltz" are similar poems because they use tone, imagery, sound and rhythm to create tension between the negative aspects of abuse and the boy's own love and understanding for their father. Hayden's and Roethke's poems use tone in the same way to show that both children ultimately love their father regardless of the abuse he commits.
Hayden's poem starts with a young adult reflecting on his childhood and remembering how hard his father worked. He thinks back and his tone is of admiration and respect. This is apparent when the young man reflects: "Sundays too my father got up early"and "No one ever thanked him." (Hayden, 1-5) The young man is realizes how hard his father worked and how little recognition he got. This makes a certain degree of guilt come over the young man. He remembers "fearing the chronic angers of that house" (Hayden, 9) and dislikes his father because of it by "speaking indifferently to him" (Hayden, 10). Then the tone changes so that the young man realizes how unfair he was to his father. He realizes that his father's love for him was in what his father provided and not in their personal interaction. This further makes the boy question himself: "What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices". (Hayden, 13-14) After this is raised, the reader sees the young man has a strong degree of love for his father "who had driven out the cold" (Hayden, 11). Similarly, the young boy in "My Papa's Waltz" is clearly very fond of his father even though his Papa abuses him. It is through the tone the young boy uses that Roethke shows how much he loves his father. This is first enforced when the boy says, But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy? (Roethke, 3-4). The boy loves his father and he hangs on to him like the one thing nobody can shake off, death. This is said in the first stanza and it is very serious. As the poem progresses, the boy's tone becomes more playful which reinforces the serious statement about how much he cares for his father. The waltz becomes less serious when he says, "We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf" (Roethke, 5). Using a word like "romped" is a deliberate attempt to make a serious event lighthearted and fun. The only reason a child would make this waltz playful is because he wants to protect his father, whom he loves. As the last stanza explains, "You beat time on my head, then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt."(Roethke, 13-16) Again, the abuse is compared to a waltz which makes it seem lighthearted. The boy is taking a serious affair and making it into a fun event. He uses this good-natured tone because he loves his father and wants to justify this serious affair. The tone of the poem "Those Winter Sundays" is similar to "My Papa's Waltz" because each son has found that he loves and admires his father. In My Papa's Waltz, the boy really values his father and the hard work he did to support the family. In Those Winter Sundays, the man is reflecting back on his younger days and comes to realize how hard his father worked to support the family and what a difficult and stressful job it must have been. This makes a degree of guilt come over him and also appreciation and love for what his father provided. Though these two boys come to realize the love of their father differently, each poem is similar because it opposes the bad aspects of abuse with the love and understanding each boy feels towards their fathers. Furthermore, Those Winter Sundays and My Papa's Waltz both use imagery to show that each boy loves his father.Those Winter Sundays does a nice job of darkening the beginning of the poem with cold, painful imagery of the father. This is most extreme when he says, "my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold" (Hayden, 1-2). This imagery of his father is gloomy and sad. The descriptions continue to be of "cold splintering" (Hayden, 6) images until the young boy realizes "who had driven out the cold" (Hayden, 11). Once the young man realizes it was his father keeping the house warm all those years, the love for his father returns to him. The imagery makes the transition smooth because it combines two extremes of feeling. The imagery starts out cold and numb but becomes warm and loving because the young man has come to appreciate the warmth his father provided. My Papa's Waltz uses imagery in a similar manner. It begins on an upsetting note about "The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy" (Roethke, 1-2). Roethke sets a melancholy mood in the first lines so that the abuse doesn't seem as terrible in the stanzas to come. This is obvious because the imagery to come is happy. For example, the boy says things like, "we romped" (Roethke, 5) and "then waltzed me off to bed" (Roethke, 15). Using light, joyful images to explain abuse is an obvious attempt on the boy's part to cover up the seriousness of this violence. This is especially true when carefully examining these two lines. The boy says "we romped" and "waltzed me off to bed" so that it includes his father as if this were a father son pastime. Once again, the boy makes it an enjoyable waltz so that his love for his father is justified. Hayden and Roethke also use imagery to show how hard working the father is. In Those Winter Sundays it is "cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather [that] made banked fires blaze" (Hayden, 3-5). Likewise in My Papa's Waltz it is "a palm caked hard by dirt" (Roethke, 14) that abuses the boy.In both cases the father is portrayed as a hard working man. The boys purposefully cast a good light on their fathers so that the abuse is excused and their love for him is warranted. This tension creates a lot of power for each poem. Finally, Those Winter Sundays and My Papa's Waltz use sound and rhythm to further show each boy loves his father even though he is abusive. Those Winter Sundays also uses sounds and rhythms to convey the boys love for his father. There is no rhyme scheme because the young man is thinking back on the scattered, broken relationship he had with his father when he was young. Instead the young man sounds to show the feelings he now has for his father. He first uses sounds that evoke feelings of cold and painful memories. The "blueblack cold" (Hayden, 2) and the "cold splintering, breaking" (Hayden, 6) give the impression of a fragmented relationship with his father. These cold sounds are contrasted with "banked fires [which] blaze" (Hayden, 5) and "rooms [that] were warm" (Hayden, 7) to show the change in the speakers opinion. The contrasting sounds do a good job at showing this change in opinion because there is an obvious transition from the bitter cold feeling the young man once had to the warm affectionate feeling he now feels. This use of sound further proves that the young man loves his father. Roethke's My Papa's Waltz is a ballad in common measure. This means that each stanza is four lines and the first and third line rhyme and second and fourth line rhyme .This form and rhythm, creates a waltz in the poem through rhyme. Each stanza has a rhythm of 1,2,3,4 which is similar to how a waltz is danced. This has a strong impact on the poem because the somewhat disturbing material can be read smoothly and easily. This makes sense when everything else is taken into account because the boy is purposefully making the poem easy and problem free so that the reader does not get caught up in the physical abuse the father commits. This alternating rhyme works very well because it distracts the reader's attention and also detracts from the seriousness of the situation.