“Those Winter Sundays” is a reflective poem about a son’s memories. The speaker recalls scenarios in which a father dutifully rose early every Sunday to light a fire and polish his son’s shoes. While these actions seem mundane at the time, the child later realizes the depth of the sacrifices his father made as he sought to earn a living. Robert Hayden was raised in a foster home after being abandoned by his parents (Buck and Smith 1). While reading through the poem, audiences are often prompted to ask one important question. How does the speaker attempt to re-evaluate specific aspects of a traumatic upbringing? Hayden often remarked that his poetry was a means through which he understood and accepted reality (Buck and Smith 8). In addition, it served as an effective tool for the definition and discovery of the unknown. The poem’s emotional appeal stems from the speaker’s realization and appreciation of the parental love his father expressed through selflessness without the expectation of reciprocity.
“Those Winter Sundays” can be interpreted both geographically and historically. Hayden was a reputed African American poet who was often criticized for avoiding racial issues in his writing. Having grown up in Detroit in the 20s, he experienced the transformation of a city that was the epicenter of migratory activity as blacks sought opportunities for work in the North (Buck and Smith 1). His difficult upbringing, especially after his parents abandoned him as a baby, shaped his view of life. The tense scenario involving his biological mother and foster parents created an unsuitable environment for a child. Hayden’s experiences provide insight into the poem’s context and allow readers to derive meaning from the compact composition.
Each of the poem’s stanzas demonstrates the gravity of the sour relationship between a father and his son. The evidence of their cold and distant connection is seen in the speaker’s helplessness as he questions the present. It is evident that past household experiences and fears have shaped his persona. He gives the reader an intimate view of his Sunday mornings as a child. To illustrate the disconnect that characterized his early days, Hayden chooses to avoid using rhyme or consistent rhythms in the poem. In addition, he uses unusual syntax and alliteration in phrases such as “weekday weather, banked fires blaze” to create disordered music, which is a reflection of his home’s atmosphere (Hayden 1). This is similar to Thomas Hardy’s use of jerky rhythm in “The Man He Killed” to express doubt and uncertainty (Hardy 1). Hayden applies a reflective tone in an attempt to review the past. However, as the poem develops, the speaker gains perspective on his father’s role in his life.
The essence of parental duty and sacrifice is the poem’s central theme. The speaker struggles to understand whether love prevails in scenarios where a parent is not related to his child by blood. He wonders whether a strong bond can form between individuals even when the situation is less than ideal. It is evident, however, that it takes years for a child to acknowledge the existence of a connection. This is reflected in the phrase, “what did I know, what did I know, of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (Hayden 1). These lines present the views of a child trapped in a rather forbidding household as his father cleans shoes in readiness for Sunday mass. The language used demonstrates the intensity of the atmosphere, and the word “austere” highlights a serious and strict form of poverty. The phrase “lonely offices” implies that the father’s acts were a duty rather than a demonstration of love.
The complexity of the association between the father and the son is evident all through the poem. For instance, the word “father” is a formal reference to a male parent. It is closely linked to the belief in Christian selflessness and suffering to cater to others’ needs. The father worked long weeks, and his “cracked hands that ached” calmly lit a fire (Hayden 1). The phrase conjures up images of a sturdy manual laborer who works hard to provide for his family. In addition, he is practical and adheres to the Church’s principles regarding rest. The speaker’s mother is conspicuously absent in the narration. In addition, the word ‘home’ is never used, which demonstrates the lack of comfort. The child lives in rooms that gradually warm up as he wakes.
The speaker believes that his father is indifferent in addition to being a negative influence on his life. The father’s seriousness and aggression induced fear and confused the child’s perception of love and the reality of family life. The assertion that the house was permeated by “chronic angers” hints at an unhappy childhood (Hayden 1). It is also possible that the parent was prone to angry outbursts, which hid the fact that the parent expressed his love through labor. The son is evidently remorseful now that he realizes how he felt about his father’s actions (Marciano and Watson 340). The hardship of Hayden’s upbringing is portrayed in his father’s tenderness as he suffers through life’s challenges.
The father is evidently incapable of expressing love in conventionally accepted ways. The vicissitudes he experiences lead to the adoption of a serious demeanor that his son misinterprets as apathy. The truth, however, is that he demonstrated his affection by getting up early every morning to toil in the harsh world so that the people he cared about could get everything they needed. The poem strives to represent a form of love that transcends identity (Halperin 417). In retrospect, the speaker realizes the depth of his father’s affection when he laments that “no one ever thanked” him for his efforts to drive the cold away (Hayden 1). In a sense, while the parent physically warmed the house, he metaphorically warmed his children’s hearts. However, these actions were too complex for the child to understand at the time. The profundity of the child’s regret is intensified when he realizes that his father woke up early on Sundays despite having worked hard through the week. The speaker gradually comes to terms with the reality that despite the absence of a blood connection, his father loved him deeply.
The speaker looks back at his life with regret. He is initially convinced of his father’s apathy, given that he seldom expressed affection in conventional ways. It is essential to note that the absence of a rhyme scheme and the use of formal language highlight the strained relationship between father and son. However, maturity prompts the speaker to express the belief that if he had known what he knows now in the past, he would have behaved differently. The speaker’s experiences are relevant today because the family unit is evolving as adoption becomes common. Children are paired with non-biological parents who struggle to forge relationships in the face of traumatic experiences. The speaker’s view of the world has been altered by experience, given that he currently grasps concepts that had escaped him as a child. Like most adoptive parents, the speaker’s father selflessly gives up his life for his children and expects nothing in return.
Works Cited
Buck, Christopher, and Derik Smith. “Hayden, Robert.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 2019, pp. 1–16, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.485.
Halperin, David M. “Queer Love.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 45, no. 2, 2019, pp. 396–419, doi:10.1086/700993.
Hardy, Thomas. “The Man He Killed.” The Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 2014.
Hayden, Robert. “Those Winter Sundays.”Academy of American Poets, 1966.
Marciano, Joanne E., and Vaughn W. M. Watson. “‘This Is America’: Examining Artifactual Literacies as Austere Love Across Contexts of Schools and Everyday Use.” Urban Review, vol. 53, no. 2, Springer Netherlands, 2021, pp. 334–53, doi:10.1007/s11256-020-00564-0.