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 preferred, instead laboring his life away to the extent that resting on Sundays is barely possible. The poem is set on Sunday so that the speaker can reflect fully on how working

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 the conflict between the American Dream and the Great Depression. Hayden’s poem is brief and to the point, its imagery straightforward rather than cloaked in symbolism. As such, the poem reveals itself to the reader and remains dedicated to revealing

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 splintering" and feel the "banked fires blaze," a contrast of the cold sound of ice and the warm crackling fire, and the contrasting

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 his father's good deeds. The first is at the end of the first stanza, where the narrator states "No one ever thanked him"

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 out for the family. The speaker asks, "What did I know, what did I know" (Hayden 14) realizing his ingratitude is worse than

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 signals a possible bruise, as if the father was indeed abusive. The father had "cracked hands that ached," which were not from the cold, though, but from