Those Winter Sundays Literary Devices

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The poem Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden dramatizes the conflict between a father and a son, particularly as this conflict relates to the sacrifices the father made out of love for his son. This sorrowful poem demonstrates how consonants are used for dramatic effect. The sounds in “Those Winter Sundays” dramatize the complexity of a father-child relationship. Through alliteration and occurrences of consonance, Hayden is able to convey the lives and relationships of these characters. With the use of these devices, Hayden creates a concise view of a relationship between and father and a child.
Reading the poem aloud and listening to every sound exposes the genius of the intricate arrangement. Not only with sounds does Hayden dramatize the relationship between a father and a child, but also by allusions. For example, by beginning the poem with the word “Sundays,” the poet makes a reference to the father-son relationship of God the Father and God the …show more content…
The speaker’s anger and frustration with the father is present in the first two stanzas. However, the use of the past tense suggests that the speaker has reached a new outlook on his relationship with his father and reveals an appreciation for all the father has done. Finally in the last stanza, the speaker begins to realize how dependent he used to be on his father and this image captures the speaker’s new appreciation for the father’s self-sacrifice or “parental” love for the child. The internal conflict of the speaker shown in the rhetorical question, “What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?”, shows his resentfulness of not appreciating his father’s love. All encompassing, the poet stresses sonic devices and colloquial diction in his poem to convey the relationship between the father and the speaker and the conflicts in their

Those Winter Sundays Literary Devices

“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, tells about a boy’s dispassionate relationship to his hardworking father and how the ignorance that comes with youth comes back to haunt him. Hayden begins the poem as if he were already in the middle of a conversation, just jumping into the topic of his father, “Sundays too my father got up early” (1). Through using “Sundays” in conjunction with “too”, it is immediately known that the father is a dedicated early bird. However, this is not without a reason…

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Those Winter Sundays Poem Analysis

their fathers. While “Those Winter Sundays” (Hayden 318) and “Daddy” (Plath 345-47) explore the theme of familial love by utilizing a melodic rhythm, they use dissimilar literary devices and figurative language to reveal different personas of the poets. Readers often explore the idea or underlying meaning of a literary work through a theme, sometimes explicitly stated but the way a reader interprets it depends on their education…

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Those Winter Sundays By Robert Hayden

In The poem, “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden deals with a young boy’s regret . Hayden effectively conveys the message of regret through allusion, diction, and imagery. Hayden uses the title of the poem to help readers comprehend the message better. Here, allusion takes place in the word “Sunday” which indicates a religious involvement. In Christianity Sundays are considered god’s day and day of rest. In the poem it shows that even on rest days the father would work hard for his son. In…

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Those Winter Sundays 'And All Bad, Dad, Not Bad'

The poems “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert E. Hayden and “Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad” by Jan Heller Levi both reveal an adult’s buried remorse of never truly appreciating their father while growing up. Word for word, “Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad” details an event in the narrator’s childhood where her father struggles to save her from drowning but fails to do so. In the poem, the narrator compares her father’s parenting in an abstract manner, equating it to her father swimming in an ocean towards the narrator…

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The Poems analysed are: The City Planners, Margaret Atwood and The Planners, Boey Kim Cheng. These are taken from the IGCSE Cambridge Poetry Anthology, but may be interesting for unseen poetry too. Question Set How do these poets use language and structure to get across their theme? I wrote this in about half an hour. Both poems are very similar, and have the same topic - City Planning - as shown in their titles. Structurally, they are different though, and the tone differs in places. I've…

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