Winter Sundays (Poem) Those Winter

¶ … Winter Sundays (poem) Those Winter Sundays" Sundays too..." means he did it everyday, not just on Sunday. Sunday was his day off work but not from putting the fire on. I noticed "blueblack" next. It was terribly cold. The tone is regret. The son didn't appreciate what his father did. Something that is chronic happens all the time. The adults were always mad at each other. Austere means there was no pleasure to it.

An office is "a position of responsibility." In the poem offices are the duties a parent accepts in relation to his child. The parent fulfills them because he loves the child. He "elected" himself to the "office" when he decided to become a parent. Although Sunday is a day off from work, there is never a day off from being a parent.

The sense images are "blueblack cold," "cracked hands that ached from labor," "cold splintering, breaking" and "warm." They make you feel the pain of winter cold and relief when a fire heats the room. No one ever thanked him," shows that the family was not grateful because they took it for granted he would start the fire every morning. What did I know" is repeated because the poet asks the question first and then answers it. Also, it's a way to forgive himself for not being grateful.

The effect is to show he realizes his father loved him, to regret that he didn't notice it when he was a child, and see the reason. He was only a child and didn't understand. Poem about Parenthood Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden is a poem about parenthood. Children don't appreciate their parents because they don't know what is involved in being a parent. They don't know the sacrifices their parents make for them.

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't sleep late on his day off. He took care of the family. In the second stanza, we get a picture of the son. He doesn't get up until his father tells him the house is warm.

Then he gets up and dresses. This is unlike his father who got dressed in "the blueblack cold." The son says he fears "the chronic angers of that house." Probably, the parents fought with each other a lot. Perhaps their fights were sometimes physical. The son uses the word house, too, not home. That gives it a colder feeling and shows the parents didn't love each other. In the last stanza, the son speaks "indifferently" to his father. He doesn't see that his father is showing love.