At its heart, “Those Winter Sundays” is about love. No, not the ooey-gooey thing between young lovers like Romeo and Juliet, but the deep and serious familial love between a parent and a child. The type of love that gets you up at the crack of dawn, even when you’re exhausted from a long week of hard work. This love is quiet and brave; it’s not showy, there are no hugs and kisses and snuggles. That means, unfortunately, that it can easily slip by unnoticed.
Questions About Love
- How does “Those Winter Sundays” define love?
- Do you think that the speaker defined love differently when he was a child? Has his definition changed? What happened between the present and the childhood to which the speaker refers?
- What is the relationship between love and time in the poem?
- What is the connection between the sonnet form of the poem and the theme of parental love?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.
As a kid, the speaker was an ungrateful little jerk who didn’t understand anything about the nature of love.
One’s perspective on love changes over time. The speaker was just a regular kid whose understanding of love grew as he grew older.