Winter Sundays," Robert Hayden memorializes his working class father in an emotionally powerful poem. The speaker reflects on the inability of his working class father to demonstrate love and affection in ways that a young child might have prefe Continue Reading...
Called a “beautiful parental love poem” (Zandy vii) and “a meditation on the fraught love between fathers and sons,” (“Those Winter Sundays” 1) Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays” captures Continue Reading...
Moreover, the narrator remembers that his father used to shine his Sunday shoes. Those small gestures went unnoticed by the young boy, who viewed his silent, cold dad as a formidable family figure. The father's selflessness is further underscored by Continue Reading...
The "blueblack cold" of a winter morning suggests the touch of cold and the sight of blue frost in the darkness. The "cracked hands" of the father who labors for his living appeals to a sense of cold, harsh touch. The son can "hear the cold splinter Continue Reading...
Robert Hayden is set at a time during the cold climates. However, despite the time frame in which the poem was set, the poem is still applicable to situations not properly set in the cold days of living. What the poet, Robert Hayden, points out is t Continue Reading...
The father in the poem got up everyday to build a fire and make the house warm for the family. Sunday was his day off from work (hard outdoor work that gave him "cracked hands" that hurt), but he didn't take a day off from being the father. He didn' Continue Reading...
Thus while the father is meant to be resting from a difficult work week, he is instead caring for his family.
It is important to note the two places in the poem where the reader can see that the narrator has the benefit of hindsight in evaluating h Continue Reading...
The title of Hayden's poem creates a mood, tone, and setting. Winter is a time of retreat and frigid weather, and imagery of cold permeates the poem. Coldness is also the core emotion that the speaker conveys. The cold is "blueblack," which also si Continue Reading...
It is an odd closeness he experiences with his father. In "Those Winter Sundays," we find a more definite appreciation for the father in the poem. The adult can look back and see how his father and know he was not punishing him but merely looking ou Continue Reading...
For example, the word "ring" connotes a wedding ring and it also refers more directly to the "ring of boots" at her feet. The word "lifted" also has a double meaning, one literal and one metaphorical. The mother remembers literally lifting her baby Continue Reading...
Poetry analysis of the works of Sylvia Plath and Robert Hayden about paternal love and affection reflects how fathers have become the symbols of brutal and cruel love for their children, stereotyping and marginalizing them in a society where mothers Continue Reading...
Ex-Basketball Player" by John Updike analyzes a former high-school basketball's life after he has graduated and introduced to the "real world." "Ex-Basketball Player" allows the reader to empathize with Flick Webb, the poem's subject, and see how Fl Continue Reading...
deliberations -- deeply thoughtful, philosophical ponderings -- about traveling through life and encountering troubling decisions, then asking questions vis-a-vis those decisions. Frost's "The Road Not Taken" turns out to be the road that was taken, Continue Reading...