In Robert Hayden's “Those Winter Sundays” (1966) the speaker refers to memories of “Winter Sundays” with their father. Contrasting cold and warm images are used to describe the relationship with the father. The poem’s title contains the word “Winter”, giving a melancholic and gloomy tone to the poem.
In the first two stanzas, the narrator introduces his father, who “got up early,” even on the cold winter Sundays, with “cracked hands” from the winter frost, to light a fire and warm up the house without seeingreceiving any gratification (ll. 5-6). The house was cold every morning, and they could “hear the cold splintering, [and] breaking.,” but the father warmed it up for the family, creating a cozy and friendly atmosphere.
Lastly, in the third stanza, the speaker reconciles and thinks about how their father was treated. The father went through the cold and hardships of life to provide warmth and safety for them, but the speaker always felt distant and cold towards the father. Moreover, the cold images indicate that the father was also feeling “cold” and lonely, but no one was there for him. The speaker regrets their behavior by asking, “what did [he] know” about love as a child (ll. 13-14).
Cold and warm images give meaning to the poem. Cold images provide a depiction of the father-child relationship and how the struggling father was treated with coldness and not love or warmth by his family. On the other hand, warmthwarm images refer to the protection and care from the father’s side and the regrets and love of the now-adult narrator.