Those Winter Sundays Tone

The poem “Those Winter Sundays” was written by Robert Hayden. The poem 's theme is centralized around the love and commitment of Hayden’s father. The poem expresses how Hayden seen his father as a strict, responsible, and sometimes angered man. Although his father was strict in his ways, he did show his love in his own ways.

Hayden wrote this poem in open form. This form allowed his poem to come to life as it moves along. The poem contains fourteen lines and there is no rhythm or rhyming pattern. The tone of this poem conveys how Hayden 's father, however hard-worked, he still made time to take care of his responsibilities at home. The tone is set in the first line, “Sundays too my father got up early”. This is a prime example that even though it was Sunday, his father did not sleep in; he got up to take care of his chores.
He uses a cold winter day instead of a summer day to add to the overall tone of the poem. Hayden 's word choices in the second line: "blueblack cold", in the sixth line "cold splintering", and in the eleventh line, "driven out the cold", helps to further describe a cold harsh winter day. Hayden sets an image of a hard worked man with his diction in line three, "cracked hands that ached". Hayden 's words in line nine, "fearing the chronic angers of that house", gives the reader insight to the father 's demeanor. Although the speaker talks about anger to describe the