Poem Analysis: My Papa's Waltz

Chris Shea

ENG 298

Professor Aimee Pozorski

04/28/15

From a traditional surface reading, one would believe that Theodore Roethke’s 1948 poem My Papa’s Waltz could be seen as simply a father and child playing and dancing together. However, if one were to read more closely, the poem takes a much darker turn. One would then realize that the poem isn’t as much about playing as it is about drunken abuse. Reading it this way, one could see how the words, descriptions, and rhythm can come together to paint such a picture.

First, let’s tackle the literal descriptions of the verses. The first verse goes as follows:

The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy busy; / But I hung on like death: / Such waltzing was not easy. (“My Papa’s Waltz”

In other words, the mother does not support the father’s actions towards the child. And he will have a lot of explaining to do when this is all over.

The third verse goes as follows:

The hand that held my wrist / Was battered on one knuckle; / At every step you missed, / My right ear scraped a buckle. (“My Papa’s Waltz” 9-12)

The first two lines of this verse pertain to the number of times this abuse has occurred. This was clearly not the first time this man was involved in abusing his child. Therefore, it reveals how abusive the father really is, especially with the use of the onomatopoeic word ‘battered’ to describe the condition of the hand.

The third line of the verse reassures the readers that the father is indeed drunk, as missing steps while walking is a common sign of drunkenness (cops use this when performing a field sobriety test). And as for the fourth and final line of this verse, this is the most obvious sign of abuse in the poem up to this point, as the author uses yet another onomatopoeic word (this one being ‘scrape’) to describe what is happening to the child at this moment.

And the fourth and final verse goes as