Jack Saindon
English 201-046

Essay #2: Poetry Analysis

In Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” (154), he talks about his father whom he never appreciated as a child, but looks back now to understand the depth of his love. The story entails the author speaking of his past as a child, where his father would light all the fires in the house, early in the morning after a tough work week. He says, “then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather” (154). This went unappreciated by anyone in the family, including the author; “No one ever thanked him” (154). Once the rooms were warm, his father would call him, only for the author to return not the thanks he properly deserved. In his poem, Hayden uses contrast to illustrate the relationship between him and his father. The temperature of the house and outside, symbolize their relationship. His father goes out in the “blueback cold” to make the house warmer, to make “banked fires blaze” so that his child can wake up in a nice warm temperature. He says, “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking”(154). Despite his effort, the author treats his father with just as much coldness as the climate they live in, even at the sight of his shoes cleaned. Hayden writes, “Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well.” (154). His father created literal warmth for him, but he did not warm up his father’s heart emotionally in return with love. In the last two lines, he says “What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?”(154). Here he is telling us he lacked the comprehension of how his father was showing him his love through the things he did for him as a child. The duties his father performs are lonely and austere because he did these things on his own and without as much of a thanks from anyone. The mood of the poem is rather sad, because there is much sympathy to be had for the father that is unrecognized for his work and of the author whom regrets being so cold to him. Being older makes him understand what he was doing and all the love behind it, but only wishing that he knew back then. In Thomas Hardy’s “The Man He Killed,” he talks about shooting a stranger in war, where had they met at a bar they would have had drinks instead. He says, “Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have set us down to wet Right many a nipperkin!” (1). The other man is a stranger just as he is to him, and therefore has no reason to shoot him other than his duty as a soldier. He writes in his poem, “I shot him dead because – Because he was my foe… No other reason why” (1). The contradiction in the poem is the fact that both he and his “foe” are presumably in the same position, and had the circumstances been different, they could have had a better time instead of killing each other. Hayden says, “He thought he’d list perhaps, Off-hand like – just as I – Was out of work – had sold his traps” (1). He enlisted because he was out of work, and this may have also been the same reason for the other man as he was also an infantryman. Being that they were both on the same battlefield, they share a same social class; as they took orders from above, and the author feels a connection with the stranger he shoots. The author refers to the stranger as foe because that is how he justifies killing the other man, because in reality he feels remorseful for his actions despite his obligation as an infantryman. He says, “I shot him dead because- Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe ofcourse he was, That’s clear enough” (1). In the end, the author paints an image of how the same stranger can become a friend or foe, depending on the situation. He says, “Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You’d treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half a crown.” (1). The mood in this poem is guilt ridden, where the author tries to justify to himself the actions he took. This is especially prevalent where he convinces himself that the stranger was a foe and he had but no choice to shoot him. He in truth regrets shooting him, but as he was being shot at, he had to shoot back. He says “I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place.” (1). Hayden makes the point that if they met somewhere else, they could have had a grander time, which also evokes a sense of regret as he sees himself in the stranger of similar position. “Undertaker” by Patricia Smith talks about the day to day life through the eyes of the undertaker, as well as the boy’s gruesome corpse and his mother’s grief. The undertaker is the central character in the poem, just as the title would suggest. He is a realist that sees things for what they are, contrasting the mother’s emotional grievance with a cold and aloof perspective. He tells the reader how the boy is now just “flaps of cheek, slivers of jawbone, a surprised eye, assorted teeth, bloody tufts of napped hair” (182). He has been doing this job for quite sometime, which is is suggested by his demeanor towards the mother, where unsympathetic of hearing the same cries. Smith writes, “The woman needs to wither, finally, and move on.” (182). The mother in the poem is non-white, or more likely Black or Hispanic. Smith writes, “knotting their smooth brown hands” (182). She is also in a lower social class, which is suggested by the difficulties of acquiring enough money to pay for the funeral. The author says, “I know she has sold everything she owns, that cousins and uncles have emptied their empty bank accounts” (182). The boy in the poem has been shot in the head, in a very messy fashion. Smith writes, “When a bullet enters the brain, the head explodes” (182). The undertaker, judging from his photo, makes the assumption that he was cocky and conceited. She says, “ In the picture, he is cocky and chiseled, clutching the world by the balls. I know the look.” (182). The undertaker makes the reader think that the boy was up to no good and that he was looking for trouble. She writes, “I know he believed himself invincible, that he most likely hissed ‘Fuck you, man’ before the bullets lifted him off his feet” (183). Overall, just as the title of the poem suggests, the undertaker presents the point of the view of the author. The poem is about the process of consultation of pricing to the recreation of the human body, where the undertaker describes his inner thoughts to us as well as the encircling events. He takes pride in his work, however, as he tells us in detail the specificity of the process of recreating the body. It says in the poem, “I have touched him in places no mother knows, and I have birthed his new face.” (183).