“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden

After reading the poem, “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden, I realized a difference in the point in time of what is actually occurring in the poem to when the speaker views the subject matter of the poem. The actions in the poem were occurring when the speaker was a younger child, living with his father. Yet, there is a change in time to when the speaker views the past events of the poem. He is portrayed to be a grown man at that point, with realizations of his father that he had never had or even considered as a child. It was only through the passing of time and the maturing of the speaker that he realized how much his father actually did for him when he was a boy, and how ungrateful to his father he had seemed. The poem describes how the father did things as little as waking the speaker up or shining his shoes, to providing for him and keeping him warm. However, as a child, the speaker never understood that these actions of his father were signs of great love and care for his family. One line in the poem, “No one ever thanked him,” (Hayden, 781), portrays how the speaker in the poem took his father for granted. He never gave him any recognition for his selfless acts of love, even though the father did deserve them. Yet, now as an adult, the speaker has realized what his father actually did for him as a child and that he did not ever give him the thanks he deserved in return.