All stories are written using different ideas that relate back to an important theme or main idea. It can often times be in the form of a message or it can directly relate to the theme of another similar story. In the case of Robert Hayden's Those Winter Sundays, and Lucille Clifton's Forgiving My Father, the main ideas of each passage are directly related and expressed through similar and different events in each story. The two short stories both show examples of the narrator's view and value of their elders, they both express the idea and end result of hard work, and they share similar stylistic writing components. Not each example has a positive effect on the reader, but the examples given in each story directly relate back to the same idea as one another. 

The story of Those Winter Sundays is about a weak father/child relationship. The father spends all of his time working to raise money for the child and make sure that the house is well suited for the his child, but the child does not fully appreciate his work. The author, Robert Hayden, writes, "with cracked hands that aches from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him." The father's work goes unappreciated by his child, but as the story progresses the child becomes more aware of the father's love and selflessness in his work. The author writes, "what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices" (Hayden, 327)? The father is experiencing more pain than the child was aware of, and the child now appreciates the father's hard work and love more than ever before. The opposite reaction occurs in Clifton's Forgiving My Father. At the beginning of the story, the child goes to the father to collect money from him that he owes to her mother, who is passed away. The father struggles each month to support his daughter without his wife, and the daughter is tired of it. She says, "I wish you were so rich so I could take it all and give the lady what she was due" (Clifton, 330). The daughter wants to avoid her father at all costs because she knows that her mother deserved more than he ever gave her and she is upset with his lack of hard work. The daughter in the story continues to nag her father about the money that he owes her and speak negatively to him about all of his wrongdoings. She never learns to value her father as the child in Those Winter Sundays eventually does.

Both stories talk about a father figure who must provide for his family. In one case, he does provide for his daughter and, though it takes her time, she learns to appreciate all that he does for her. He does not necessarily just work out of the house to support her, though The story talks about a father "who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well" (Hayden, 327). He works around the house to do all that he can for his loved ones and to give them the best possible life. Hayden also writes, "with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze." No matter how much pain the father was in or how hard it was for him to go on, he never failed to love and support his family. On the other hand, the father Forgiving My Father was not as responsible and caring towards his family. His daughter continued to complain to him that he "gave her all you had which was nothing" (Clifton, 330). The father never cared enough to put his efforts towards working for his family and giving them all that he possibly could with the situation he was in. He continued to "come up empty any Friday", which was payday for the family bills (Clifton, 300).  

As both stories progress, they begin to show even more differences in their writing styles. Robert Hayden uses a style of writing that is referred to as volta. Volta is an Italian word meaning "turn"(Glossary). In the case of Those Winter Sundays, the turn is in the style of writing that Hayden uses to further explain the relationship between the child and his father. The first two stanzas are full of harsh words and syllables such as "cracked", "ached", and "splintering". These words give the poem a negative tone and sets the mood of the relationship of the father and son that they had for so long. As the third stanza begins, though, the author began using lighter, less harsh words such as "polished" and "good". The change in the severity of the language along with the child's newfound appreciation for his father both strongly effects the tone change of the poem. This drastic change, or turn, is called volta. Lucille Clifton does not use volta in her writing of Forgiving My Father. The daughter never truly does learn to appreciate her father; therefore there is no turn in the way of tone or mood, only a continuation of the hatred that she feels towards him. Throughout the entire poem the daughter professes the hate that she feels towards her father though harsh phrases such as "daddy old lecher" and old pauper, old prisoner, old dead man" (Clifton, 330). A drastic change in the way she talks to her father does not occur anywhere in the poem as it did in Those Winter Sundays. This style of writing that does not include a volta is a style that Clifton chose to use in order to emphasize how horrible the relationship between the father and daughter was. It aids the reader in understanding that the main character does not fully learn to appreciate her father or forgive him for his actions, no matter how potentially beneficial his actions may be for his daughter. 

Hayden and Clifton's works are both centered on very similar themes and morals, but each of the poems portrays a different perspective on the issue. Hayden focuses his attention on a relationship between a father and song that begins weak, with a lack of respect, but slowly turns into a relationship full of respect and love. The author displays this relationship through his use of harsh words followed by the use of a stylistic technique called volta. Volta expresses the change or turn in tone between the characters in the last stanza of the poem when the son begins to recognize all of the good that the father has done for him. In contrast to that, the author of Forgiving My Father, Lucille Clifton, expressed different feelings towards the main character's father through similar literary elements. The entire poem includes harsh language and unappreciative phrases about the daughter's feelings about her father. Clifton does not include a volta which tells the reader that there is no change in the relationship between the father and daughter anytime in the poem. Both authors wrote about the value of elders, the reasoning for how hard elder's work, and the progression of a child and father relationship. They each used different techniques to portray the themes, making the two poems easy to compare and contrast. 
