Appreciation is all Some People Need( Poetry Reaction 9)

          For the most part people fail to notice all of the things one person does for another. They do not appreciate, all the hard work a certain person will go through just to make the other person happy. “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden portray a hard working father on a day of relaxation. Sundays are usually referred to a day of rest before having to go back to work the next morning. Some people don’t get those times where they could just relax, there is always something to do. These people that are always working are trying to better other people, in the case of the speaker, his father is waking up early just to chop wood to warm their house up and keep them warm.

In the Winter, houses can be very chilly, in the past the only way to warm up houses that didn't have heaters was with a fireplace. The only way to get the fireplace to light was to add in wood, and you would get that wood from chopping down trees, this is not an easy task. Someone strong has to be able to do it. In the case of the speaker of this poem, who seems to be a young weaker boy, his father wakes up much earlier than the rest of the household. The father sacrifices his rest for his family. Yet, he does not get recognition for this, his family just wakes up to a warm roaring fire, not even thinking about how the fire came to be.

We are already told that during the weekend this father does so much work that his hands have cracked. They ached, just from that we know he is a hard worker. He probably has to work day and night to get enough money to take care of his family. He still gets up on the cold sundays, and goes outside to chop wood for the fireplace. The child stays in bed while he listens to his fathers labor, he doesn't go to check on him, see maybe he needs help, no he just waits. This furates me! I believe I am one of these people that does a lot of work for her friends and family. Sometimes I’d appreciate if they would just notice and say “Samantha, thank you for all you’ve done for me!” That would be the best day of my life.

The best part of this poem is the last line “What did I know, what did I know

  of love’s austere and lonely offices?” I believe this is the speaker looking back at how his father used to do all these things for him. He must be realizing now, maybe he himself is a father now, looking back at all the work his own father did that now he has to do. Whats good about a relationship between a child and parent is that the deeds can be repaid. When the child grows older, than they will be able to take care of the parents. I cant wait for the day that I am able to support both my parents, because they have supported me my whole life.

This poem made me realize that in my family we need to say we appreciate each other more. I feel the need to stop typing now and go into my parents room to tell them I appreciate them. I know them to well they’ll probably think I want something from them. Its very hard to be a teenager in this household. When it comes to my friends, I have sllowly found myself doing less and less for them. I feel they don’t realize what I do for them, I try to help them whenever I can. I show my own appreciation of them almost every day. Though I feel that is slowly dwindling, its quite sad that I once saw them as people that actually deserved all my help, when I find they don’t do much for me.

Many Morals to go Around(Reaction #9)

 Opening up to Chicago 1950’s A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry was a very enjoyable read. It was fun to picture a lot of what was going on in each scene because each scene is painted out so nicely in words. Not only was the play written so nicely and with witty stage directions but it was packed with good morals for the play reader and watcher. Its funny thinking about something thats supposed to be for entertainment purposes teaching you something as well, it gives the reader life lessons they should know throughout their whole life.

An example of how the play paints a picture is right in the beginning Ruth asks her husband if she wants eggs and he tells her not to scramble them, but she immediately starts scrambling it. I read it twice and it made me laugh both times because I kept picturing a woman vigorously scrambling the eggs and snickering to herself as she did so because shes going against her husband's wishes. It gave humor to a scene that was otherwise about wants and desires from everyone in the family.

A key theme in this play is that money is able to buy happiness, and from all that i've ever been taught I know This isn’t the case, because you lose money, you have to pay for things with it. Its great when you have a large sum of it but when the amount dwindles so does the happiness it brought. We also find early on that there is a lot of ‘want’ involved in the play. Each character wants something, Ruth wants money, Walter wants to buy a liquor store to get more money, and Mama wants to have a nice house with a lawn to be happy. Its sad when people don’t realize what they already have, although they lost Mama’s husband, they still have eachother, its hard to be content with the things you already posses, its human nature to always want more and more. Its one of the 7 deadly sins, Greed, which the Younger Family must know about from their mention of God.

This play reminded my of a play I went to see when I was in Middle school. I believe it was called the ‘Curse of the Monkey Paw’ and it was about a family that somehow obtains monkey paw that grants wishes. And of course the family doesn’t think before they wish, though they were warned  to be careful what they wish for, which is another cliche warning we hear a lot. Well the son dies in a tragic work accident, and the rest of the family is so distraught about it that they wish, with the help of the monkey paw for him to come back to life. What the family didn't count of was that their son would rise from the dead and be all mangled up from the work accident and not back to normal. It was a very scary play for little middle schooler me.

Yet another moral I took from the play was that you can't always make everyone happy. When there a people in your life that want one thing, and you want another you can’t always make both people happy. There were many morals in this play that I took from it. Its good to read something like this, because somewhere someone is reading this play and really needed to see the actions that each character took to realize what they should really be doing in their own life. The play is there to be an example to people so that they realize their flaws.