In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, ‘It might have been.’ ” In the poem, “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden reflects on what might have been. He remembers his failings as a child. Specifically, Hayden reflects on his unappreciativeness towards his father. Towards a man who did his best to give him a good life. Since Hayden deeply regretted his ungratefulness towards his father as a child, he used imagery, personification, symbolism, and other devices to craft an inspiring poem that teaches a moral lesson about gratitude and thankfulness.
At its heart, this poem is about love. It’s about the regret that the speaker has for not loving his father enough during his childhood. As a child, the speaker …show more content…
Hayden uses imagery often in this poem. One example of imagery comes in the phrase “blueblack cold.”(Hayden Ln 2) In this phrase, Hayden describes the cold as blueblack. He uses the sense of sight to describe something that is felt. This synthesis of these two senses helps to develop a much clearer picture in the reader’s mind. He also uses personification in the phrase “fearing the chronic angers of that house.”(Hayden Ln 9) The use of personification in this example insinuates that the speaker lives in a household mostly controlled by their angry father. This poem is also huge on symbolism. The most prominent symbol is the temperature. The cold and the warmth. In the beginning everything is cold. But as the poem progresses, and the speaker’s father makes the fires blaze and warms up the house, and thus the literal temperature changes. The father endures the cold during the weekday labors so that the speaker can be warm. However, emotionally, everything is still cold. The speaker is still indifferent and cold when he speaks to his father. Another symbol used in this poem occurs in the last line in the poem. The speaker talks of “lonely offices”(Hayden Ln 14)) when referring to love. The lonely offices are a symbol of how hard the speaker’s father works for his appreciation. Everyday he wakes up early to make sure that the speaker will be warm. Yet, his hard work just leaves him feeling unappreciated and lonely in the end. Instead of a rhyme scheme, Hayden used other forms of sound play in his poem. He uses assonance in the words sundays, weekday, ached, labor, made, and blaze, which all share the long A vowel sound. Hayden also uses consonance in this poem. The words ached, blueblack, weekday, and banked all have the short consonant K sound. Every literary device used in this poem helps to develop the theme and to better