This is a really, really, rough draft. Please be nice.

A New Critical Reading of Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays”

“Those Winter Sundays”, written by Robert Hayden, is classified as a contemporary sonnet.  This means that it is made up of the traditional fourteen lines, and is about love.  However, it has no rhyme scheme, and the verse has no meter.  The lesson that the reader learns from this poem, its universal truth, is that a parent’s love for their child must always be practical as well as emotional.

The first stanza, composed of five lines, begins by describing what seems to be a typical morning for this home.  The father rises early to stoke the fires in the home before he wakes anyone else.  More than that, the speaker gives the reader an idea of the circumstances surrounding both the home and the father.  In the first line, “Sundays too my father got up early,” the word ‘too’ suggests that he gets up early every morning to warm the house before waking anyone (line 1).  The mention of the word ‘Sunday’, bring about religious connotations.  Sunday is traditionally the day of rest in Christian-based religions, and it is also the day on which people go to church.  In the third stanza, the speaker again brings religious imagery by speaking about his “good shoes” being “polished”, on that Sunday (12).  The reader can infer that by polishing and wearing his good shoes on Sunday that he is getting ready to go to church.  The father wakes and dresses in the “blueback” cold (2).  This term somehow makes the morning colder, and in turn makes the importance of warming the house more important.  The father is described as having “cracked hands that ached,” from “labor in the weekday weather” (3-4). The father works with his hands outside, probably meaning that he is from a lower socio-economic class.  The father makes “banked fires blaze”, which pits the cold imagery against the warm (5).  The final sentence of the stanza is, “No one ever thanked him” (5).  This sentence has substantial meaning to the poem in its entirety.  First, it suggests that the speaker is looking back on past events, looking back from adulthood to childhood.  Second, it suggests that there are more people in the family than just the father and the speaker; there are more people who are not thanking him for warming the house.  Third, the structure of this sentence is different from all of the other sentences.  It is only five words long, as opposed to the length of the other sentences.  This difference seems to signify the importance of this singular sentence.

The second stanza, comprised of only four lines, is the shortest of the three stanzas.  In the first line, the speaker would “wake and hear” the sound of the house heating up, describing it as “cold splintering, breaking” (6).  This line also gives quite a bit of information.  First, it tells us that these sounds were woke the speaker up in the morning.  Secondly, it helps the reader to understand just how early the father gets up, as the sounds being described are those of a house warming up, which it would take some to do.  Interestingly, the speaker does not get out of bed upon being awoken, but rather waits until “the rooms were warm” (7).  The final line of the stanza, “fearing the chronic angers of that house”, could have two different interpretations (9).  One interpretation is that it is the house itself that is angry, creaking and groaning with the constant temperature change.  Another reading is that the members of the house, or one member in particular, are angry often.  It could be that the speaker is simply waiting to rise until the house is warm, but more likely it is due to trying to avoid the tension within the family.  The only evidence given that could cause anger within this poem would be the constant need for hard work on the part of the father. 

In the third stanza, the speaker illustrates the relationship dynamic with the father by “speaking indifferently to him” (10).  This ‘indifference’ or coldness, lends a credibility to the idea that the “chronic anger” comes from the father.  However, in the very next line, the tone changes.  The father is not just an angry man, but one “who had driven out the cold” (11).  The word ‘driven’ lends itself to the idea of fighting or battling.  The reader can see an image doing battle with the cold, pushing it backward and out of the house, protecting all those inside.  This father, the one waging war on the weather every morning, does not seem cold or angry at all.  This father seems determined and strong.  Moving to the third line, the tone shifts again, and the ‘warrior father’ becomes the father who “polished my good shoes as well” (12).  There is more to this father than anger and strength.  This imagery is full of tenderness and of love.  It also suggests pride, making sure that the speaker’s shoes are shined and ready for church.  The final two lines of the poem transport the reader back to present day: “What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (13-14). The repetition at the beginning of line thirteen implies the regret that the speaker feels with regard to their childhood treatment of their father.  The final line suggests that to love someone is a harsh and serious job; one that can in fact be lonely.  As an adult, the speaker recognizes that the father showed love to his family by ensuring that they were warm and comfortable.  The father’s role was that of provider and protector, a traditional definition of the word.  The use of the word ‘did’ implies that the speaker now understands the role his father played, and feels guilty for not understanding and appreciating it sooner.

While writing this analysis, I had to keep in mind the rules for New Criticism.  I had to ignore the fact that this was published in 1962 by an African American man who grew up in Detroit during some of the most difficult times, both racially and economically, that Detroit has seen.  I was able to use the father’s physical condition to infer that he worked a job that paid a low wage, but I was not able to use the fact that the auto industry was hit hard by the Great Depression, and that work was scarce.  I had to ignore

Because I had to ignore the difficulty that the father would have had finding work based on his race and the scarcity of jobs during this time, I could not definitely say that he was the source of “chronic anger” in the home, although anger would be completely justified.