My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

558 Words2 Pages

All parents have different ways of interacting with their children. Poet Theodore Roethke writes the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” to showcase a relationship between a child and his or her father. Roethke uses purposeful ambiguity to allow his audience to come up with their own interpretation of the relationship by leaving the matters uncertain. The poet wants the audience to take what they know about the relationship and question why he chooses to leave matters the way they are. The poet crafts the poem using various negative connotations that might cause the reader to believe the father and child don’t have a good relationship. For example, the poem says “The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: such waltzing

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