These Winter Sundays is a poem written by Robert Hayden. The poem involves a speaker who can be inferred to regret not being grateful to a figure he calls "father" (Poetryfoundation.org). This “father” forms the basis of the poem such that all the themes presented in the poem revolve around him. The speaker clearly describes how his childhood view of his father changed as he grew up. The current article will analyze three major points that the poem “These Winter Sundays” explicitly communicates to its audience. Contextual evidence from the poem will be used to verify the presence of the points mentioned in the poem. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The first point is a hardworking father and full of fatherly love. Throughout the poem, the speaker portrays his father as a loving family man who worked hard for his entire family. In the first line of the first stanza, the speaker states that "on Sundays too, my father woke up early", and in the fourth line again of the first stanza, the speaker states that "from the work of the week he was done” This indicates that, even when on Sundays his father was not supposed to wake up early, he could simply wake up and complete certain tasks that he might otherwise have avoided if he had not worked hard. To demonstrate how loving he was as a father, the speaker argues that his father could "shine my good shoes too" in the third line of the third stanza. The second point concerns domestic violence. There is a notion of domestic violence throughout the poem. The speaker in the second line of the first stanza speaks of "blue-black cold," a phrase that is directly related to the violent setting and environment, most likely the family. The speaker states "Fearing the chronic angers of this house" in the fourth line of the second stanza, which directly references the violence of the speaker's house. We can affirm that it is this “father” who propagates the violence experienced in the speaker's property. The first line of the third stanza makes this argument obvious as the speaker relates that “speaking to him with indifference” means that the speaker fears his father most likely because of his violent nature. The third point about the poem concerns the realization that the speaker's father deserved better treatment from everyone in his family. The second line of the third stanza, “Who had driven away the cold,” indicates that the speaker became aware of the role his father played in the family. The context of the term cold in this line cannot be used in reference to the internal violence of the family but rather to the external challenges that his father worked hard to eliminate and for which he deserved recognition. To further prove that the speaker did indeed realize that his father needed more gratitude, in the fourth line of the third stanza the speaker states, "What did I know, that did I know? ", a statement that makes it clear that the speaker has finally achieved what his father deserved.Keep in mind: this is just a sample.Get a custom article from our expert editors now.Get a Trial personalized These Winter Sundays is clearly a poem that uses all the tools and elements of poetry to emphasize certain family themes that existed during its author's years. Each word, verse and stanza helps to effectively bring out the meaning of family life over the years of the author, considered one of the..