Have you ever felt regret about being selfish towards your parents or thankful for everything your parents have done for you? In the poems “My Papa’s Waltz”, by Theodor Roethke and “Those Winter Sundays”, by Hayden White both narrators have felt the same feelings towards their parents. Writing about childhood memories can be a great method of symbolizing emotional experiences of one’s childhood. Both poems are very similar themes. Each of the poems tell a story of a child who reminisce on their lives by telling about certain events that occurred during their childhood. Both poems are sentimental and emotional narratives of the boy’s relationship with their fathers. In “My Papa’s Waltz” the narrator uses specific imagery and words that are easy to understand, helping make the poem provide emotion. The poem “Those Winter Sundays” is much shorter but has a corresponding issue. The poem’s interpretation of meaning depends on reader’s point of view. Although both poems are very brief, they grasp an emotional outlook and values of relationships efficiently.
The poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” tells about a father and his son enjoying a small amount of quality time together by waltzing. The themes of the poem are memories of the son’s father and a child's love for his father. The poem’s setting is in the family’s house and the story is narrated by an adolescent boy. The father is an average man who is caught up in an excessive consumption drinking. The poem states “The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy.” The father’s cut up knuckles and dirty palms are signs that he is a lower class worker. Accordingly, the poem is arranged in four stanzas resembling the structure of their “waltz”. Also, the poem’s appealing projection make...
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...ugh both poems are analogous in nature, the poems differ aspects slightly differ. The descriptive language used in “Those Winter Sundays” constructs a mental picture that provides the reader with great emotion. The imagery used to describe the fire and the father’s cracked hands allows the reader to feel like they know the father. Also, the characteristics of the family’s economic status and the images used in “Those Winter Sundays” portray a better understanding of the characters and emotions, although the interpretation in “My Papa’s Waltz” may take away from the theme of the poem. The theme of “Those Winter Sundays,” is delivered very clearly. The way the author, Hayden White portrays the feelings and emotions of the child from an adult’s point of view is what makes “Those Winter Sundays” to be better written than “My Papa’s Waltz” making the poem more superior.
The most notable qualities of Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” are the tone and language of the poem which convey the nostalgia adult author feels thinking about the time spent with his father. In the title narrator’s father is affectionately referred to as “Papa” making the impression that the main character and his father are close. The use of possessive pronoun “my” contributes to the overall impression that the father holds special place in the narrator’s heart. As word “waltz” in the title implies the poem gives account of the festive occasion in which the narrator’s father takes part.
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, “My Father as a Guitar” by Martin Espada, and “Digging” by Seamus Heaney are three poems that look into the past of the authors and dig up memories of the authors fathers. The poems contain similar conflicts, settings, and themes that are essential in helping the reader understand the heartfelt feelings the authors have for their fathers. With the authors of the three poems all living the gust of their life in the 1900’s, their biographical will be similar and easier to connect with each other.
Abuse is a difficult and sensitive subject that can have long lasting effects. These traumatic emotional effects are often intensified if the abuse happens at a young age because children do not understand why the abuse is happening or how to deal with it. There are many abuse programs set up to counter the severe effects which abuse can have. Even more, poets and writers all over the world contribute works that express the saddening events and force the public to realize it is much more real than the informative articles we read about. One such poem is Theodore Roethke’s My Papa’s Waltz which looks carefully through the eyes of a young boy into the household of an abusive father. Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays is a similar poem from the perspective of a young adult reflecting back on the childhood relationship with his father and the abuse his father inflicted. These poems are important because they deal with the complex issues surrounding the subject of abuse and also show the different ways which children react to it. My Papa’s Waltz and Those Winter Sundays are similar poems because they use tone, imagery, and sounds and rhythms to create tension between the negative aspects of abuse and the boys own love and understanding for their father.
“The Whipping” and “My Papa’s Waltz” both deal with critical and serious issues that lie within the human mind. The issues being compared can be viewed as abusive, emotional or confusion. The reader can possibly be drawn by the poet to experience their own memories, emotions, and experiences in similar situations. These childhood memories can easily be revisited as adults and their life experiences can be viewed differently as they enter into adulthood. Both pleasant and unpleasant memories stay with a person throughout his or her lifetime. In each of these poems the poet expresses similar situations in his own journey through his eyes as a child.
Despite the use of certain words such as “papa” and “waltz,” the overall connotation represented throughout the poem seems to concentrate more heavily on the negative aspects of the narrator’s memories. For these reasons, one can conclude that the poem aims to illuminate the immaturity and irresponsibility of the
Theodore Roethke’s poem, My Papa’s Waltz (1948), presents both a warming memory of a boy and his father as well as a dark story of an abusive childhood. Combining a story of both joy and horror sends an important message of abuse and the fear it instills in the victims. Through Roethke’s structure and word choice in My Papa’s Waltz presents two stories which simultaneously depict the fear and Stockholm Syndrome type love often found in abusive relationships.
Robert Hayden poem ”Those Winter Sundays” explores his father as an unsung hero and it also presents an acknowledgement of poets lack of gratitude for his father. The speaker reflects on the childhood memories of his father and goes on to find all kinds of disabilities he had in terms of realization regarding the pain father bared for the poet. Story is very emotional in the way that the speaker reveals sacrifices of his father during his childhood throughout the poem. It is agonizing and the words used in the poem are really an expression of desperation and sadness as he is really missing that time. There are a number of sacrifices made by the father during the harsh winter season of writer’s childhood. In his childhood he was not actually aware about the harshness of those lovely and affectionate feelings that his father had about him. In the poem ”Those Winter Sundays” Robert Hayden uses imagery and sound devices to portray his father as an unsung hero and to acknowledge his own lack of gratitude
The poem “Those Winter Sundays” displays a past relationship between a child and his father. Hayden makes use of past tense phrases such as “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking” (6) to show the readers that the child is remembering certain events that took place in the past. Although the child’s father did not openly express his love towards him when he was growing up, the child now feels a great amount of guilt for never thanking his father for all the things he actually did for him and his family. This poem proves that love can come in more than one form, and it is not always a completely obvious act.
In the essay I hope to explain why I picked each poem and to suggest
Theodore Roethke's poem “My Papa's Waltz” is a unique American poem which is written in iambic trimeter. The poem captures the sometimes intense relationship between father and son. Roethke's own father, a German immigrant, died when he was still a teenager. His father was a major inspiration in his life and images from his childhood appear throughout his poetry. A biographer, Matt Forster comments that “His poems are often explorations of his own psyche, using imagery from his childhood to describe his interior life (Forster 2005).” He became one of the best known American poets by the end of his lifetime in 1963. In the famous poem “My Papa's Waltz” the author uses musicality and deep psychologically-rooted themes to create a poem that is unforgettable and alive with action. The poem is composed in iambic trimeter which parallels the 1, 2, 3 tempo of a waltz. This feature helps in creating the illusion of musicality and dancing as is suggested in the poem's title. Thematically the poem comments on the oedipal complex, the intimate relationship between father and son, loss, memory and music.
Childhood experiences seem to be the ones that are recollected most vividly throughout a person's life. Almost everyone can remember some aspect of his or her childhood experiences, pleasant and unpleasant alike. Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz" suggests even further that this concept could be true. The dance described in this poem illustrates an interaction between father and child that contains more than the expected joyous, loving attitude between the two characters. Roethke's tone in this work exhibits the blended, yet powerful emotions that he, as a grown man, feels when looking back on this childhood experience. The author somewhat implicates feelings of resentment fused with a loving reliance with his father.
In Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays”, a grown person, most likely a man, recounts the winter Sundays of his childhood and the sadness of lost opportunities to develop bonding ties between father and child. The man realizes that as a child he failed to appreciate the hard work his father did in order to provide the basic necessities. The word choice that Robert Hayden uses is not complex, which requires little effort to read and is easily understandable. However, if one were to explicate this poem, it proves to be a complex piece with a well-defined sentiment of the conflict between unrecognized love and regret. Hayden’s diction helps communicate the underlying tone of the story. Imagery plays a major role in this poem. The speaker, who
Family bonds are very important which can determine the ability for a family to get along. They can be between a mother and son, a father and son, or even a whole entire family itself. To some people anything can happen between them and their family relationship and they will get over it, but to others they may hold resentment. Throughout the poems Those Winter Sundays, My Papa’s Waltz, and The Ballad of Birmingham family bonds are tested greatly. In Those Winter Sundays the relationship being shown is between the father and son, with the way the son treats his father. My Papa’s Waltz shows the relationship between a father and son as well, but the son is being beaten by his father. In The Ballad of Birmingham the relationship shown is between
While most of us think back to memories of our childhood and our relationships with our parents, we all have what he would call defining moments in our views of motherhood or fatherhood. It is clearly evident that both Theodore Roethke and Robert Hayden have much to say about the roles of fathers in their two poems as well. While the relationships with their fathers differ somewhat, both men are thinking back to a defining moment in their childhood and remembering it with a poem. "My Papa's Waltz" and "Those Winter Sundays" both give the reader a snapshot view of one defining moment in their childhood, and these moments speak about the way these children view their fathers. Told now years later, they understand even more about these moments.
Every parent in this world loves their children more than anything. Even the children can’t stay away from their parents for so long. Nothing in this world could be more precious than the love of a parent has for his/her children. Our parents are always with us no matter what happens. Often in life we make mistakes, but our parents give us supports and teach us to learn from those mistakes and move on with our lives. They also try to teach us from their experience. Parents always make sacrifices to provide for their family. In the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Huges and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, the poets talk about how the parents are always making sacrifices to make their children’s life a little bit easier. Both of these poems reveal the struggle the parents go through in order to provide for their family.