FREE ESSAY ON THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Sidney David Garner Jr.
ENG 1102 TR 11am
Kluczykowski
Unmentioned Love
Poetry and love have been continuously linked side by side for generations of
generations. The greatest poems in the world contain this famous theme of love. Love is a
universal symbol of lust, forgiveness, happiness and at times hatred. The poem "Anyone
Lived In A Pretty How Town" by E.E. Cummings is a poem based on two people who live in a
town where love is unknown and not spoken of . The two are the only people in "Pretty How
Town" that can feel love, but they speak of it. In "Those Winter Sundays", by Robert
Hayden, Hayden captures love as one possible theme. Not love as in romance or beauty, but
an unmentioned love that can never be spoken in any language; the loves between a father
and his son. 
In the first stanza the reader automatically can paint a picture in his or her own head a
possible image Hayden wants to get across. For example, "Sundays too my father got up
early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold" paints a vivid picture (1-2). Blue
and black can both be possible symbols of death and coldness or possibly water to the
reader. Early in the morning when the sky is still a majestic dark blue color the ocean
appears to be a black abyss. Hayden continues to describe "father's" aching hands from
labor in the weekday weather (3). I believe that Hayden is portraying an older aged man
who supports his family as a fisherman. This explains why the narrator says "Sundays too
my father got up early", a fisherman has to get early to beat out any other competitors
(1-2). 
The line the starts the theme of the poem is the last line of the first stanza; "no one
ever thanked him" (5). Unmentioned love can be the deepest type of love. It is love that
can exist deeper in the heart and mind than any other type. "Father" does not need to
hear I love you or thanks, he can feel it in the atmosphere around him. It is an
unexplained love.
The second stanza goes into further detail of the love of "father." The narrator speaks
of how "father" drives out the cold early in the morning before the rest of the family
awakens. "Father" wakes in the cold so that he can make the house comfortable for
everyone else. The narrator says, "I would rise and dress fearing the chronic angers"
(9). I believe "father" wants the family to get up early to get chores out of the way
early. Father gets up early seven out of seven days so it is possible he would like the
family to wake up early at least once a week.
In the final stanza the narrator remembers how his father showed his love threw his
actions,"...who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well...." (12). The
narrator now sees how "father" expressed his love to the family. Unmentioned love becomes
a reality; love that is only acted out threw actions and expressions, not words.
Overall this one possible theme of love is strong in "Those Winter Sundays". From the
start of the poem to the end the narrator learns how caring his father really is.
"Father" can only show is love threw actions, not language. Thus a possible theme of this
poem is love that is unmentioned. 
Bibliography
Hayden, Robert. Those Winter Sundays. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction Poetry 
and Drama. 7th ed. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Longman, 1999. 
1074.