Those Winter Sundays Analysis
“Those Winter Sundays”
Jordan Scott
This poem is about a father-son relationship. It is sad because the son doesn’t talk about his father in the most loving of ways. It’s very depressing because it talks about a normal day to day schedule, the father waking up and putting his clothes on achingly. It’s sad, when the son says he fears the chronic anger of that house. I think this poem is about how in this household, Sundays are especially lonely and cold, and even more so when it is in the middle of winter. I wonder if this poem is really about Robert Hayden and his father. It seems like the son does not like his dad, but also feels greatly respectful towards his dad because he says ‘no one ever thanked him’ in kind of a spiteful way. He wishes his dad did more with his life, because he figured he deserved better. I think this poem talks about family relationships and how over time they can become repetitive, and make you go a little crazy. You feel like you need a way out but you’ve spent so many years this way that you feel you can never move on. The father in this poem seems like he was a strong and courageous figure while the song was younger, but now that he’s older, he’s lost some of that- and this makes the son angry, that his dad isn’t the same person he used to be. When you lose that person you look up to, you doubt a lot of stuff in your life. The son obviously has some pent up issues about his father, the way he speaks about the house being angry all the time-maybe the father had become a drunk? The son uses personifications throughout the poem, saying the house has emotions. He obviously means that the father is what causes his pain and suffering. I am kind of confused because he goes back and forth, one second he is complaining about the angers and the bad times he’s had in the house, but then he goes on to say that he thought his father deserved better. Maybe it is just a respect thing.
