My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

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Theodore Roethke is one of the most accomplished and influential American poets. He has published various volumes of award-winning and critically acclaimed poetry. One of his affluent poems is “My Papa’s Waltz” which was published in 1948. The poem depicts an image of a young boy waltzing with his intoxicated father. The voice of the persona in the poem contributes to the poem’s effectiveness since it is told from the young boy’s perspective. He is indirectly expressing his feelings regarding his father’s lifestyle. To summarize, the father had too much whiskey and began to waltz around the around the kitchen with his son. The waltz was extremely clumsy as the son kept scraping his ear on his father’s belt buckle. After the shenanigans, the young boy’s father waltzed him off to bed. Therefore, the theme of “My Papa’s Waltz” is the young boy’s reminiscent of his father’s alcoholism. From my …show more content…

“The whiskey on your breath/ Could make a small boy dizzy/ But I hung on like death/ Such waltzing was not easy” (1-4). Alcoholism is a destructive condition to those closest to the alcoholic and it affects the family in several different ways as they suffer from a range of problems. Children may develop low self-esteem, loneliness, and fear of abandonment. Therefore, the young boy felt neglected by his father because he was not consistently present in his childhood due to his egregious alcohol consumption. The young boy despised the atrocious whiskey smell because it made him dizzy; however, he learned to tolerate the smell because he was afforded opportunity to spend quality time with his father by waltzing. He may have opposed the circumstance, but it was a chance to create a memory with his father, which is why he held on

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