Poetry and love have been continuously linked side by side for generations of generations. The greatest poems in the world contain this famous theme of love. Love is a universal symbol of lust, forgiveness, happiness and at times hatred. The poem Anyone Lived In A Pretty How Town by E.E. Cummings is a poem based on two people who live in a town where love is unknown and not spoken of . The two are the only people in Pretty How Town that can feel love, but they speak of it. In Those Winter Sundays, by Robert Hayden, Hayden captures love as one possible theme. Not love as in romance or beauty, but an unmentioned love that can never be spoken in any language; the loves between a father and his son.
In the first stanza the reader automatically can paint a picture in his or her own head a possible image Hayden wants to get across. For example, Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold paints a vivid picture (1-2).
Blue and black can both be possible symbols of death and coldness or possibly water to the reader. Early in the morning when the sky is still a majestic dark blue color the ocean appears to be a black abyss. Hayden continues to describe fathers aching hands from labor in the weekday weather (3).
I believe that Hayden is portraying an older aged man who supports his family as a fisherman.
This explains why the narrator says Sundays too my father got up early, a fisherman has to get early to beat out any other competitors (1-2).
The Essay on Early Sunday Morning Analysis
Early Sunday Morning is a quintessential Edward Hopper painting. Looking at the painting you see a stretch of street with no street signs and completely void of any human activity, nothing is happening. The point of view of the painting is from across the street, looking at the two story properties. The shadows, pavement, and the building create an interesting series of horizontal lines. The only ...
The line the starts the theme of the poem is the last line of the first stanza; no one ever thanked him (5).
Unmentioned love can be the deepest type of love. It is love that can exist deeper in the heart and mind than any other type. Father does not need to hear I love you or thanks, he can feel it in the atmosphere around him. It is an unexplained love. The second stanza goes into further detail of the love of father. The narrator speaks of how father drives out the cold early in the morning before the rest of the family awakens. Father wakes in the cold so that he can make the house comfortable for everyone else.
The narrator says, I would rise and dress fearing the chronic angers (9).
I believe father wants the family to get up early to get chores out of the way early. Father gets up early seven out of seven days so it is possible he would like the family to wake up early at least once a week. In the final stanza the narrator remembers how his father showed his love threw his actions,who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. (12).
The narrator now sees how father expressed his love to the family. Unmentioned love becomes a reality; love that is only acted out threw actions and expressions, not words.
Overall this one possible theme of love is strong in Those Winter Sundays. From the start of the poem to the end the narrator learns how caring his father really is. Father can only show is love threw actions, not language. Thus a possible theme of this poem is love that is unmentioned.
Bibliography:
Hayden, Robert. “Those Winter Sundays.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction Poetry and Drama. 7th ed.
Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Longman, 1999. 1074..
