“Those Winter Sundays” & “My Papa’s Waltz” Essay

By: Emma Crowley 711

Sometimes children don’t understand how much their parents do for them because they love them. Poems show lessons that you can use as you go through life. The poems “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden and “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, both show the love parents express to their children but in different ways. These poems with similar themes can be presented differently.

“Those Winter Sundays” by Theodore Roethke is about a boy telling the reader how hard his father worked for their family and how the father was never thanked. “No one ever thanked him” the speaker said. His love is too hard to distinguish as love, so is never thanked for what he does for his family. The speaker makes the reader think about how parents can express their love for their children in a subtle way. It also makes the reader think about how we should appreciate people who do things for us and how people can show their love in different ways. We see this in the line “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking./ When the rooms were warm, he’d call,”. This shows the reader that the father woke up early in the freezing cold to make a fire so his family wouldn’t be cold when they woke up. This is a sacrifice that the father made for his family. We see the father as a very selfless person. Although this example is hard to identify as love, it is. A final example is at the end of the poem the speaker says “What did I know, what did I know/ of love’s austere and lonely offices.” (Love’s austere means stern/ very plain love. Offices is a role someone takes on.) The father is displaying his love for his family in a a very plain way that isn’t usually classified as love. In the end the father shows the message of love in his own way.

“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke is about a child telling the reader about how he waltzed with his father. This father has a completely different way of showing his love towards his son that “Those Winter Sunday’s”. When this father comes home to his son he plays and waltzes with him. For example the speaker was telling the reader about how “ We romped until the pans/ Slid from the kitchen shelf,”. Now romping means to play in a lively way, showing that the father was frolicking around with his son to express his love. His father wants to continuously express this feeling to his son by having a good time together whenever he can. For example “Then you waltzed me off to bed/ Still clinging to your shirt.”. This is showing two things, one that he puts his child to bed sending this message of love. Secondly it shows that the child recognizes this message from his father and the love he (the child) feels for his father, that he doesn't want to let him go (still clinging to your shirt). All in all this poem shows that the father is affectionate towards his son in his own way, and his son recognizes this act.

In conclusion the thing that makes these poems similar is how the fathers show their passion they have for their children, but what makes these poems different is in the way they show it. One father shows his love by working hard to take care of his family and the other father shows his love by interacting and playing with his family.  We see that these poems show that parents do these different little acts of kindness to express their fondness for their children. Sometimes it can be hard to notice that what they are doing is because they love you. And sometimes we can’t know that someone’s actions are how they express love to us.