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Guanyu Li

HUMN-2010

Professor Diehl

November 4, 2020

Analog Project #2

Storge love is selfless love, you give without expecting anything in return. “Those Winter

Sundays” is a short story in which Robert Hayden, the author, depicts one of his childhood

memories. This poem describes a usual Sunday that the author had in his childhood. The author

recollects part of the most memorable periods in his life, and he also shows his regrets on the

relationship between his dad and him. Every single thing that the father did was spreading strong

agape love and storge love to his son, which is similar to the movie “The Passion of the Christ”.

Both poem and movie are sharing the same types of love, and these agape and storge loves are

powerful, even though people may not be able to understand or recognize these types of love

when the time they received it.

In the happiest of our childhood memories, parental love is the greatest fortune that we

have, and it will never expire. The poem “Those Winter Sundays” starts with depicting all duties

that the father did on Sunday morning. The word “too” on the first sentence indicates that the

father is doing the same stuffs from day to day, over and over again, including on Sunday. It

conveys a strong agape love that the father gave to the author or the other family members. It

seems like that the father has never complained about his duties. The father may have work in

the morning during the weekdays, so there should not have a big impact on him about getting up

early. However, it seems like that the father does not have works on Sunday, therefore, it is not

necessary for him to get up early. Sunday should be a break day, relax day for everyone, but the
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father stationary gets up early and does all the preparation on every Sunday. Winter’s morning is

cold, most people have difficult time to get up in the cold weather. The father gave up on his

relaxing time and dedicated his time to his family, it is showing a strong selfless love. The author

mentioned some small details in the poem. The author wrote that his farher would only wake

them up when the rooms were warm, I think it is because he doesn’t want his child to get cold

when they wake up, it shows parental love. Moreover, the words “cracked hands” and “ached”

show that the father work really hard to provide the family. His father had carefully taken care of

them. And when he uses “blue black cold” to describe his father’s cloth, it gives audience a sense

of feeling of loneliness, especially when author stated that no one thanks his father. It seems like

that the relationship between father and the other family members are not too close, including the

author. The author spoke indifferently to his father, who had done all the works for him.

Although they were all living in the same house, but I feel father’s inside heart was lonely. The

father has provided tons of acts of services. Serving his child may considered as quality time to

him, he is possibly enjoying serving his child.

Agape love is selfless and sacrificial, it serves regardless of circumstances. Parental love

is similar to the love of god. In the movie, “The Passion of the Christ”, we see how Jesus gave

out agape love by sacrificing himself for the sins of the world, and not everyone is appreciated

and understood to his sacrifice. Jesus has not resisted from brutality. Even though those people

were torturing to him, but he was still pleasing the god to forgive them. The agape love that Jesus

gave is similar to the father. The father was the hard-working person in the house, no one say

“thank you” to what he did, but he was continuing doing what he was doing. He is willing to

bear all hardships without complaint. The act of service is the common love language that I

found in this poem and “The Passion of the Christ”. The father is willing to do anything to his
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child or family, Jesus is willing to do anything to his Christians. They are both self-sacrificing,

and worthy of respect.

In this society, many people failed to comprehend parents’ difficulties. It is never easy to

be parents. Most of the time, parents need to supply boundless storge love and unlimited acts of

service. Many people are like the author, they’re not able to understand their parents until they

become mature or have their own child.