Those Winter Sundays Essay
Broken Bonds Family dynamics vary widely from household to household. There are those that have parents and kids who cannot spend more than a few minutes apart, while there are others that do not even speak on a daily basis. For the latter, there can be a plethora of outcomes from those strained familial relationships. “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden explores some of those issues and their complexities, focusing mainly on a breakdown caused by a lack of understanding of all that a father provides to his family as well as broken lines of communication. Hayden indirectly addresses messaging and compassion issues in this poem through the use of a child’s point of view in a darkened atmosphere. For starters, Hayden puts communication
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The child immediately starts describing his actions by saying, “Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueback cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday” (1-4). The narrator establishes from the very first lines of the poem that the man is a blue-collar worker, which connotes an unglamorous lifestyle with backbreaking work and low pay. There is no flash in this poem whatsoever; it is the antithesis of luster. He proves time and time again that his love for his family is more important than taking the weekend off and resting. There is obvious compassion in his actions, but it is not reciprocated. Toward the end, the child goes on to mention their father as the one “Who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well” (11-12). Through those two lines, the father almost turns into a superhero as he protects the family from the evil and powerful cold. Moreover, his actions show that he does the little things that count too, like polishing shoes. By the conclusion of the poem, the father seems to be the lone bright spot in a dark world and situation that cannot seem to get much bleaker. He embodies a grit and grind nature that should be praised endlessly, but ultimately seems to be
The child immediately starts describing his actions by saying, “Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueback cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday” (1-4). The narrator establishes from the very first lines of the poem that the man is a blue-collar worker, which connotes an unglamorous lifestyle with backbreaking work and low pay. There is no flash in this poem whatsoever; it is the antithesis of luster. He proves time and time again that his love for his family is more important than taking the weekend off and resting. There is obvious compassion in his actions, but it is not reciprocated. Toward the end, the child goes on to mention their father as the one “Who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well” (11-12). Through those two lines, the father almost turns into a superhero as he protects the family from the evil and powerful cold. Moreover, his actions show that he does the little things that count too, like polishing shoes. By the conclusion of the poem, the father seems to be the lone bright spot in a dark world and situation that cannot seem to get much bleaker. He embodies a grit and grind nature that should be praised endlessly, but ultimately seems to be