Many of us go day by day living our lives without appreciating the
             true value of family. We occasionally take for granted the individuals who
             have brought us into this world, and generally forget to thank them for all
             they have done. I myself have fallen in this category, as I frequently
             bypass all my mother does for me, and often forget to thank her. This never
             seemed like a huge issue at first, but I was surprised on the joyous look
             on my mothers face when i acknowledged her for all she's done.
             In reading Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden, I found a direct
             comparison of what my situations at home were like. In the first stanza we
             get a sense of how hard a worker the father really is, and how he isn't
             really acknowledged for all he does. We see this in detail in the very
             first line " Sundays too my father got up early" which gives us an
             understanding that he woke up early each day of the week. This showing of
             hard work continues in line three where the narrator refers to his fathers
             hands as cracked from hard labor. The stanza finishes off by the narrator
             mentioning that no one ever thanked his father, and this could be largely
             due to the fact that he viewed all his father doings as duties he had as a
             While Hayden's focus on the first stanza was on the speakers dad we
             now pay attention to the speaker himself and truly notice the fear and
             respect he has for his father. In the first couple lines we see again how
             the fathers devotion was all in favor of the narrator as he awakes in a
             warm room, and this was all possible because the father awoke early enough
             to make sure the house was warm. Although the father does much for his
             family the narrator tell us in lines three and four that his household
             seems to be unhappy as he " would rise and dress fearing the chronic angers
             of the house" This could be for many reasons, the first being that a mother
             has yet to be mentioned so an...