"those Winter Sundays" Case

Analysis on “Those Winter Sundays”

In the poem of“Those Winter Sundays”, the speaker should be a child. As it is mentioned in the poem, the hero of this poem is the father. Thus, I assume the speaker of the poem should be one of the children of the father. As I read further, I notice that the poem was not written in a masculine pronoun. This makes me wonder whether the speaker was the daughter. However, as I finish reading the poem, I would say that the speaker was the son of the father. The poem was written in a gentle way. In the first line, the speaker used the word “too”. This showed that the father did those stuff every Sunday morning. He was moved by the father’s hard work and contribution for her family for a long time. In the latter line, the speaker said “fearing the chronic angers of that house”; it seems the son’s love was conflict (Robert). He love his father, but he cannot forget something bad of him.

The poem described a situation that a father walked up early in a cold winter morning to heat the house for the whole family. The weather was very cold but he waked up and put on his clothes without any hesitate. He did not wake his family up until the house was getting warm. The son was awake since his father got up and watched all the things his father did for the whole family. “Blueblack cold”, “cracked hands”, and “ached from labor”, these are important details that showed how carefully the speaker observed his father (Robert). The son appreciated that, but still, he did not say thank you to him and “speaking indifferently to him”. At the end of the poem, the speaker used a question---“What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?” (Robert) In fact, the speaker was not asking anyone else, but himself. He can deeply feel his father’s love and he was buried in happiness.

For me, this poem is a moved poem. It is neither romantic poem