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Those Winter Sundays Figurative Language

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An Analysis of “Those Winter Sundays”

The title “Those Winter Sundays”has a double meaning to it. On one hand, the title can be taken literally, meaning the poem speaks of the days of the winter season that the author’s father would wake up early to make fires and warm the house. However, the title can also be taken another way. The word “winter” in the title could also refer to the cold, indifferent way the narrator treats his father and how empty and frigid the relationship between the narrator and his father seems to be. Hayden’s use of two meanings in the title makes it all that more significant and poignant. “Those Winter Sundays” features numerous instances of figurative language. The line, “blueblack cold” is an example of both alliteration …show more content…

Throughout the first two stanzas, the speaker speaks of his father bitterly, as if he resents him. The way Hayden has written the speaker makes it seem like the speaker is young and immature for the majority of the poem. For example, in the first stanza, the speaker talks about how his father had worked and toiled all week to support the family and still gets up early on Sundays to start the fires. Despite this, the line “No one ever thanked him” reveals how ungrateful the speaker was towards his father. In the second stanza, the speaker describes how his father would not wake him until the house was warm, once again showing the kindness of the father. However, the poem takes on a solemn tone at the end of the second stanza with the line “fearing the chronic angers of that house.” This line makes the reader question if the father is actually kind or instead fought with and perhaps even abused the speaker. The final stanza features a major shift in tone as the way the author speaks about his father changes. In this stanza, the speaker seems to be more mature and regretful of the way he treated and viewed his father when he was younger. The line, “What did I know, what did I know,” shows that the speaker is now aware and appreciative of all his father sacrificed. At this point, the speaker has realized that he did not understand his father at all when he was younger. The speaker’s view on his father has become

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