My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

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Is the poem My Papa’s Waltz about a loving father and son dance or a dark story about child abuse? The poem My Papa’s Waltz was written by Theodore Roethke. The poem deals with a father and son dancing around their house one night. As one looks deeper into the poem you can sense a darker side to the poem.
The waltz is a dance performed by two people who in tune with each other and should bring the two people closer together. However, the dance in this poem does not portray a loving and intimate dance but instead portrays the dark side of the waltz and sets the undertone mood of the poem that there is something darker and deeper going on than what you see on the surface. Theodore Roethke shapes the way the reader responses to reading the …show more content…

The couple dancing sways back and forth and they go around in circles across the floor. This poem takes our emotions and sympathies on a roller coaster ride because the speaker scrupulously uses frightening images in conjunction with very soothing comforting images. For example, the speaker begins with a frightening image in the first stanza: “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy” (1–2). Then the speaker begins the second stanza with the words “We romped,” which undercuts the seriousness of the tone in the first stanza and then the speaker reminds us again that their romping has consequences, which immediately takes us back to the seriousness of the waltz: Pans slid from the shelf, and the speaker’s mother frowning in disapproval …show more content…

The poem leads us easily to draw this distinct conclusion. The poem doesn’t scream that boy hates his dad or even that his dad was hurtful or mean to the kid while he was young. Instead it is a poem that expresses physical control to the point of manipulation and maybe some abuse on the dad’s part. The waltz is portrayed as dangerous shown through the appearance of a disapproving mother (lines 7 and 8), a battered knuckle (line 10), a buckle that repeatedly scrapes a boy’s ear (12), and finally a dirt-caked hand that strikes the boy’s head repeatedly under the pretense of keeping time with the waltz. The fact that the speaker says, “You beat time on my head” (14), instead of “keeping time” strengthens this

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