[Writer's surname] 1

[Writer’s name]

[Professor’s name]

[Course title]

[Date]

Literary Analysis

The two texts discuss children as subjects and their childhood experiences. Both

attempt to describe the childish perspective of grown ups and the associated behaviors.

Furthermore, the writers describe the dependency of children on parents and the manner in

which they rely on them. Moreover, children seldom realize the importance of this

relationship and learn to appreciate it when they reach the doorsteps of maturity.

Those Winter Sundays is a nostalgic poem, where a son remembers his father. It is an

excellent example of Hayden's intricate understanding of human experience. Apparently there

was some distance between them and very little communication. But the paternal love was

definitely there, which he had shown subtly by building fires in the winter mornings even on

Sundays just to keep his son warm. The poem sounds like a mournful monologue by the son

of his indifference and ignorance to his father’s love and affection. One interesting fact was

that Hayden, the poet; himself was not raised by his real parents, but by his adopters who had

adopted him at the age of just eighteen months.

The poem starts with the speaker's father getting up and dressing before the daybreak,

and confronting the cold, murky darkness of the house all by himself.
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The father's hands, their dryness and pain were metaphorical human reference of the

toughness of his weekday work. Yet his concern of his child overshadowed any feeling of

pain and misery and urged him to make a fire. The confession by the poet that "no one ever

thanked him" is really heart touching, and this also gives a fair idea of his understanding of

the isolation and loneliness of his father as his sufferings and efforts go unappreciated by the

other family members.

Once the warmth is established, the father calls his son to get up and dress. This

reflects the understanding of his father’s love that the poet acquired when he himself became

a father. Then the poet describes the presence of “chronic angers" in the house and his family.

And lastly the act describes his father polishing his shoes more like a servant than a father.

The use of adjective "austere" here not only means simple, plain, but also removed

from the notions of pleasure. This defines a father who ignores his own comfort and

confronts the cold and pain of his hands for the comfort of his family. The second adjective

used, "lonely," adds to the notion of isolation, which his father experienced every morning

during building the fire.

There exists an underlining confession that in his childhood the poet doubted his

father's love; and he assumed love can only be expressed in certain, more obvious ways. But

when he grew up considerably older then he realizes that love is often expressed mutely and

obliquely, and he then became able to comprehend it in the early morning actions of his

father. There still exists a sadness at the end of the poem, a grievance for the lack of chance

to thank his father, or to treat him better.

Lucinda in Running out of Music was “a 13-year-old American girl stuck out.” who

was, along with her parents, living in a training base a few miles away from the Czech

border. Her personal interaction with elders was limited to her parents and teachers until she
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met Nately. Nately, besides being a Pfc, was a “real rock aficionado with a vast record

collection” and Major Collins, Lucinda’s father, had found it an easy way of quenching

Lucinda’s thirst for music. Lucinda’s immaturity and reliance on her father was also revealed

during her first visit to Nately when she tried to walk behind her father to avoid the Northerly

cold wind. Soon the same girl will grow up to meet the same guy alone in more difficult

climatic conditions. In front of Nately, Lucinda’s immaturity and aesthetics of music were

challenged and Lucinda realized that she is too young to know everything. But her

willingness to learn inspired Nately to go out of the way to help her. Then the gradual

metamorphosis begins when Lucinda went to visit Nately on her own, the first of many. Her

feelings of desperation and helplessness, on her first visit to the barracks on her own, also

reflect her juvenile behavior. Her naive question about keeping “the motor clean” was

another clear indicator of her lack of knowledge that other children of her age normally

possessed. Snowden’s reaction on her visit was also an eye opener for the little girl, who was

welcomed everywhere before, that she is no longer little now and people may think of her as

a grownup.

Her attitude of hiding the meetings with Nately from her father also shows a

transformation towards maturity. This developmental maturity was more pronounced by the

fact that even she herself felt thrilled over the notion of these secret meetings and became sad

at Nat’s late arrival in their Nazi tower meeting, when she considered the idea of his inability

to come.

Her sense of loss and feelings of inability to accept Nat’s death were further evidences

of her maturity, as children accept death as a certainty more easily than the adults. And the

fact that she was exhilarated by the idea of acquiring all Nately’s records and tapes after his

death is also a cue towards the fact that lately her meetings were not solely for the purpose of
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music, but that there was something else deep beneath which had made her realize that her

loss is greater than her gain.

Works Cited

Squires, C. Running Out of Music. The Atlantic (Fiction Issue). Aug 2008.

Hayden, R. Those Winter Sundays. Poetry for Students. Volume 1. Gale Research. 1962.