Poetry Essay- "Those Winter Sundays"

In a brief essay, identify at least two of the implications implicit in the society reflected in the poem. Support your statements by specific references to the poem.

Humans are complex, both innately self-interested and compassionately selfless. At times we act out of duty, out of hatred, out of custom, or out of love yet we never truly reach full understanding of each other’s driving motives until time brings with it an epiphany. In our society individuals mostly focus on themselves and their goals in order to achieve that success or that satisfaction that is so yearned, and this can lead to an ignorance of those around us. Of their silent struggles, unnoticed sacrifices, and meaningfully small acts of love. These sacrifices which pass by without regards are what maintain us forward without our knowledge. Also, in our society it has been observed that one can willingly face hardships, loneliness, and contempt in the name of love. Both of these occurrences are present in Robert Hayden’s poem, “Those Winter Sundays.”

Survival in our society requires sacrifices and the passing of hardships, yet it is common that the ones who carry the burden of sacrifice are the ones that are forgotten. The poem depicts a father, with markings of hard labor imprinted onto him, acting in a manner that is not required of him for the benefit of his family. He beats the cold out of his home with no returned gratitude, his hands are cracked yet he is treated with indifference. This is the common scene in our society, a society in which since we are too focused on our own doings we seem to forget that it is due to others that we are where we are.  Only when the passage of time has worked its doing does it then dawn upon us what we had turned a blind eye to. Remorse then follows for all those times when sacrifices went unnoticed and we seem to blame it on the tenderness of our age, the inability to understand. Yet in all reality, we saw without really caring to see.

We are capable of facing many things in the name of love, sometimes its pain while at others it can be the wrath of outsiders. In this poem love is accompanied with loneliness and desolation. Despite the “chronic angers” that were present in the household, due to reasons we can only imagine, the father worked for his family alone and unappreciated. Not out of duty, his duty would have been accomplished during the weekdays, but out of love on those cold Sunday mornings. The heat of his sacrifices and misunderstood love melted the ice crust over the home. Yet it was not until later that the son reminisced fondly of this fatherly figure that worked “love’s austere and lonely offices.”

Humans are complex, we never truly know what makes them act. And the reality is that we rarely seem to focus much on those around us to truly notice what they do for us. Despite the lack of recognition, the indifference that they are dealt, they continue sacrificing. Sacrifices in many sizes and in different manners, but when they are done in solitude and in the name of love they leave lasting prints on our lives no matter how faint.