Hayden goes into detailed explanations of examples of the father’s devoted love. His love is not shown through hugs and kisses, but through caring little things that bring happiness to the speaker’s day. This happiness can be seen by the regret the speaker shows when he says things such as, “No one ever thanked him” (5). The father’s devotion is seen when the speaker states that he had “with cracked hands that ached / from labor in the weekday weather made / banked fires blaze” (3-5). The father, regardless of his own cares, makes the effort on those winter Sundays to try to make things a little easier for the speaker.
“Reunion” by John Cheever is a short story about Charlie who hasn’t seen his father since his parents’ divorce. So on his way back to his mother’s house he schedules a lunch with his father. Yet Charlie’s view on his father changes when his father continually has problems controlling his bad attitude. In “Powder and “Reunion” the authors use father/son relationships, point of view and conflict to portray to the reader that almost all father and son relationships have their flaws. In the two short stories it seems as if the sons’ relationships with their father were quite different, but they also had their similarities because both of them cared for their son.
The Nazis inhumanity and brutality slowly diminished his hope and desire to live. Despite Elie’s constant battle, it is from the interaction with other characters that he is able to maintain his hope. Elie depends on his father for support, and his love for his father makes him strengthen his hope and desire to live. When they arrived at the camp, his father said that he would rather Elie to go with his mother than to see what they were going to experience as men. The father began to cry and this was the only time that Elie saw his father cry.
In the beginning of the story, Brother recounts the day Doodle was born, saying that he was a disappointment as soon as he entered the world. The narrator was not satisfied with his brother, which resulted in the horrible things he thought about him. Brother said that “It was bad enough having an invalid brother, but having one who possibly was not all there was unbearable…” As a result, the narrator enjoyed torturing Doodle, threatening to abandon him multiple times. He even took Doodle to see the casket that was built for him, and forced him to touch it. The narrator basked in the control he had over his brother.
Harmonium and Nettles Harmonium and Nettles both highlight the theme of memory. As they both are looking back over past memories that are painful, the poems feature the feelings of being helpless in stopping the hurt that was caused. The writer in Harmonium feels remorse for the things he hadn’t said to his father as Armitage states “then mouth in reply some shallow sorry phrase or word too starved of breath to make itself heard”. The writer in Nettles is protective of the recurring threat to his child that he can’t destroy. “rain had called up tall recruits behind the shed,” this quote shows the father cannot destroy them .They differ in the way they felt powerless however as in Nettles the father is feeling powerless because of a physical threat whereas in Harmonium it is an emotional threat of the inevibility of death and unspoken feelings that makes the writer feel powerless.
He understands the sacrifices that Darry has made to raise him and his brother. Even though Ponyboy sees that his brother works hard to provide for them, he still thinks Darry just doesn't care for him at all. He thinks Darry is always nagging him to use his head and to be good. This changes when Soda and Darry come to the hospital to visit Ponyboy after he has been hurt in the church fire. Ponyboy has a revelation.
Likewise, the hardships Tom had to endure as a child toughened his soul and sharpened his mind. Abandoned by his alcoholic father, Tom lived in “a miserable tworoom tenement” (Anderson 650) with his mom and siblings. The situation went from bad to worse when his mother passed away, leaving her little children uncared for. Tom, who was just 10 years old at that time, forced himself to overcome grief and to hold himself together for the sake of his siblings. He even shoved his father off in the funeral of his mother and worked arduously to fend for his family.
Those winter Sundays By Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?
He never knew his father so he doesn’t have a good sense of his own identity, he makes poor decisions in raising his son’s by instilling a false sense of what it takes to be successful, and allows them to steal and cheat. Willy’s father left when he was a baby and he only has one memory of his dad, “All I remember is a man with a big beard, and I was in mamma’s lap, sitting around a fire, and some kind of high music” (Miller 1232). After his older brother Ben leaves shortly thereafter to search for their father, it is assumed that Willy doesn’t have a male figure in his life during his upbringing to teach him the things that a father would teach a son, such as morals, and a sense of values, possibly helping him form a sense of identity. Because of this Willy feels a tremendous sense of loss. Willy confesses his sense of loss over his father’s abandonment to Ben.
Most workaholics are in marriages that have been going on for many years, and this lack of attention has been hurting their wife for majority of the relationship. Women claim that they have to raise their children alone. Emotional connections are lost when fathers work too much. “My husband works too much and it used to bother my child as he was growing up. He understands now because he is a little older, but just as I was, he was always worried that something happened to his father.