Figurative Language In Those Winter Sundays

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Robert Hayden’s poem, “Those Winter Sundays,” is an adult looking back on a childhood memory and finally understanding how his father portrayed his love. The child was unable to understand his father’s love and affection since it took a different form than what is usually accustomed to. A cold environment and harsh relationship between father and son are created in the poem. This is evidenced by the harsh consonant sounds, metonymy, and the repeated question in the third stanza. The son later realizes the father had been performing actions out love the whole time and regrets his attitude towards his father as a child. The first stanza consists of alliteration paired with repeating, harsh consonant sounds. Those harsh sounds help the reader …show more content…
In the poem, leading up to the last line, there are examples of small acts of kindness from the father but since they are small, they tend to go unnoticed. Every Sunday, the father would wake up early and start a fire to warm the house before anybody else woke up. He worked long, hard hours so he would be able to provide for his family. The father also polishes the son’s shoes. All of these would easily be overlooked and the author realizes this in the second to last line of the poem when he states, “What did I know, what did I know” (Hayden). As an adult, he realized those acts, no matter how small, showed his father’s love and dedication to the family. As a child, it is easy to overlook the small things parents do. Children do not understand everything their parents do and do not have enough life experience to understand why they do some of those things. When those small actions are routine, it is especially easy for a child to overlook them because they are so used to it happening regularly. In this poem, the small actions he does are done every Sunday. This isn’t about a specific memory but the memories of what happened on a typical
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