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Those Winter Sundays Tone

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Robert Hayden uses tone shift in “Those Winter Sundays” to showcase the complexity of parenting styles and how easy miscommunication can be caused between parent and child. This is done through the speaker's perspective of childhood and how his father influenced his experience in his youth. By shifting from a regretful to an enlightening yet reminiscent tone, we see how our speaker misunderstood his father’s expression of love and why it was misinterpreted. Towards the beginning of the poem, a regretful tone is shown from the speaker who feels guilty for the way he treated his father in his childhood. It;s used to demonstrate how our speaker misunderstood his father’s expression of love. This is shown when the speaker expresses that “no one …show more content…

This phrase is used to show his acknowledgement of the way he treated his father, knowing that it was wrong. The use of the word “ever” creates the assumption that his father should’ve been thanked, but never was, creating that regretful tone. Using this tone throughout the beginning of the poem expresses how as a child, the speaker didn’t understand his father’s style of showing love and therefore unappreciated him. Additionally, it conveys a common issue between parent and child where a parent’s well-meaning action goes unrecognized due to a misunderstanding coming from the child, causing emotional disconnect on both ends of the spectrum and causing this feeling of sorrow later in life. “Those Winter Sundays” gives us the perspective of a child which is commonly left out when dealing with conflict including a parent. This connects to our thematic topic because it shows the disconnect and the feeling of regret that …show more content…

As this epiphany dawns on our speaker, he asks the rhetorical question, “what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (line 13-14) As a child, the speaker only felt that love was portrayed in one way, through words of affirmation and warm gestures, when in some realities, it’s shown through “austere and lonely offices.” The acts his father performed were often selfless, yet quiet. He showed his love through actions such as “polish[ing] [his son’s] good shoes” (line 12) and even working on Sundays to provide for the family. These acts are silent and become normalized, therefore they go unnoticed. Our speaker notices this as he reminisces on his childhood further, creating an enlightening tone. This is important because it connects further to the overarching theme about how love can easily be misinterpreted due to how complex showing love is, especially from a parental perspective. While the parent showed love the only way he knew how, the speaker didn’t receive it properly because he didn’t recognize it as it was meant to be. This reveals how with time and wisdom, we often see where we misunderstood something so important such as our parent’s love, and recognize how that truly impacted our view of those people in our early and later life. While it was no fault of

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Parents or caregivers take on many responsibilities that often lead them to making sacrifices for the people they love. An example of this can be seen in the poem titled Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden. The poem has lines that explain a fathers hard-working sacrifices. It says, “Sundays too my father got up early,” and, “then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday-”. This provides a window into what the father may have gone through in order to provide for his family.

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Every story consists of different elements, such as characters, plotlines, and settings. Nonetheless, many stories portray the same messages or ideas. “My Papa’s Waltz,” by Theodore Roethke, depicts a reckless father who is loved by his child, while “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden, depicts a hardworking father whose child is indifferent to him. Though the poems depict exceptionally different childhoods, both contribute to the idea that perceptions of parents alter as one grows into adulthood. Both poems use harsh words and critical tones in order to convey this notion, however in “My Papa’s Waltz,” they signify the recklessness of the father and how the narrator perceives his father as an adult, while in “Those Winter Sundays,” they

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“Those Winter Sundays” has a sad dark tone. “Speaking indifferently to him” (Line 10). It is clear that there is little communication between the father and the son. The author remembers how his father woke up early to heat the house and worked hard to provide for the family. Although this poem is much sadder, it still shows love.

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to still keep established pace and tone, which is that calm, disassociated mood. At this point the father, the reader might think, is a construction of the husband’s mind, because the husband had focused on “the idea of never seeing him again. . . .” which struck him the most out of this chance meeting, rather than on the present moment of seeing him (Forn 345). However surreal this may be in real life, the narrator manages to keep the same weight through the pacing in the story to give this story a certain realism through the husband’s

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In conclusion, “Those Winter Sundays” uses imagery, diction, an emotional appeal to grasp the reader's attention. The last line of the poem reiterates the child regrets of not showing his father appreciation “what did I know, what did I know” What did I know is repeated to twice to show

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One similarity that the image and the poem have in common is featuring cracked, dirty hands as the main image that goes through the audience 's mind while viewing these works of art. In “Those Winter Sundays”, Hayden uses imagery to get this image into the reader 's mind with the line “cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather” (3-4) If the author just ended the line with “cracked hands”, the reason behind the cracked hands could have been up for debate, whether it be old age, dryness, or labour by hand. However, by mentioning the cause of the cracked hands, the reader is able to imagine a more vivid image of what the hands must look like and understand why they look like they do. It was also very important that the author mentioned this towards the beginning of the poem. If it were to be stated towards the end of the poem that the father had cracked hands, it would

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Lastly, the two words the son and the man add to the complexity of the relationship. This shows that the man can’t picture himself being a father, especially after knowing he can’t meet the child’s expectation, but will always picture his son being a child in his eyes. In conclusion the author uses literary devices to add depth and emotion to the complex relationship between the two characters. He does this by changing the point of view throughout the poem from son to father. He uses a purposeful structure from present to future coming back to present to demonstrate with the complexity of the father's

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Poet Robert Hayden, in his work, “Those Winter Sundays”, composed a poem that makes the reader feel as if they are a part of the story, by using imagery and diction. In this poem, diction and imagery are connected. Robert Hayden in the poem "Those Winter Sundays' uses imagery and diction to create a heart wrenching response in the reader, as the speaker in the poem reflects on the youthful memories he has of his father . It is the word choice that really makes the poem as visual as it is. In this poem there is a child and a father.

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