My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke is a poem that examines and focuses on a dark and abusive relationship between a father and son. A son who lives in a broken and dangerous household. The title is very innocent and loving, but the poem in itself is very mature and serious. The waltz is usually a light-hearted and loving dance that brings two people together, but this dance is anything but that. The speaker is remembering and reflecting on a memory that he once had with his drunk father. Their relationship seems incredibly dysfunctional and abusive. The father is abusing his innocent son, and the son is powerless. A father, who is supposed to protect and love his son, is destroying him. I think that the son wants repress his memory of his …show more content…
father’s drunken episode, that he glamorizes and fantasies it by, telling the reader about this “dance routine”. When you think of dancing, you picture harmony and togetherness, and that is what he has wanted all along. Roethke, as a child, wanted a harmonious and loving relationship with his father, like a normal child has.
He wants the reader to really examine and delve deeper into the poem, and question if this is really a dance routine or an abusive relationship. This awful relationship has had a lasting impact on Roethke, and therefore remembers incredible details. For example, he recounts the memory of what his father’s breath smelled like, saying, “The whiskey on your breath, could make a small boy dizzy.” That signifies how this memory has burned into Roethke’s brain. He truly was the small boy in the scene and he was so used to having these fights, that he even knew the type of alcohol his dad drinks. That was so baffling to me that a young boy could recognize what kind of alcohol his father was drinking, and remember it as a man. What really said a lot about their relationship was when Roethke said, “But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy.” They both were physically and emotionally unstable, and the boy hung on for dear life. Also, the father at one point, is aggressively holding onto the son’s wrist, which is not normally how dance partners hold each …show more content…
other. The father can’t physically hold himself up because he is so intoxicated, and the boy tried, with what strength he had, to hold himself up.
It wasn’t easy fighting these battles with his stronger, drunk father. It also wasn’t easy to fight back, at the same time, because of that moral dilemma, that Roethke is fighting his own parent. This shows how strained and tormented their relationship was, that a son is defending himself from his own father. Roethke also says, “we romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf”, instead of just saying that they fought so hard that the pans fell from the shelf. He used “romped” because he wants to bring the reader back to the dancing aspect of the scene, and not focus on the brutality of the situation. He is going back to how the child version of himself saw this, and what he really wanted to see. This is not a graceful dancing scene, there are people being injured and chaos is occurring. Waltzing, in this poem, is representative of the father and son’s physical altercation. It hurts too much for Roethke to say that his father is abusing him, so he uses waltzing. This shows how destructive their relationship was and how he was barely coping with his father’s drunken states. These altercations most likely happened throughout his whole life, living with his parents, and it seems that they have deeply scarred
him. His mother was disturbed and evidently disgusted with the “waltzing”, but she felt helpless and wasn’t strong enough to defend herself. The persona says, “My mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself.” She couldn’t physically do anything, but her face told it all. Roethke even says at the end of the poem, “Then waltzed me off to bed, still clinging to your shirt.” He is basically describing how he got tucked in that night and that was his father’s way of putting him to bed. Instead of tucking him and kissing him goodnight, like a normal ritual, the father and son end the night fighting. They end the night, where a boy is barely breathing and the father is responsible. That shows how horrible and abusive their relationship was, all due to the father’s actions.
However, neither the setting of the poem nor its events can be linked to the ballrooms where people dance waltz. The opening lines of the poem portray the narrator’s father as a drunken person “The whiskey on your breath/ Could make a small boy dizzy”. The dancer is anything but elegant, he doesn’t waltz gracefully but romps “until the pans/Slid from the kitchen shelf”. The poem is set in a family home, most likely in the kitchen. Thus, the narrator is trying to downplay the social connotati...
The major themes of the poem reflect the poet's own inner life and his struggle with the loss of his father. Through this complicated and intricate poem the inner feelings of the poet are made manifest through the speaker's tone towards the father. The exchange between father and son represents a magical moment in the speaker's childhood: dancing the waltz with his father. In the second stanza, the poet comments “My mother's countenance / could not unfrown itself (Roethke 7-8).” Here the poet seems to regret the fact that he hoarded his father's time after a long day at work, when his father could have been s...
It is obvious this is an evening ritual, one that is cherished. The boy is aware of his fathers’ waltzing abilities and he concedes that he is up for the challenge. The irony of the statement, “I hung on like death” (Roethke line 3) is a private one, yet deeply describes his yearning for one more waltz with his father who passed away when Theodore was only fifteen years
In the poem, the act of 'waltzing' symbolizes love, though not without some strife. "Such waltzing was not easy" (Roethke pg 602, 4)....
“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke can be interpreted in a few different ways. The most obvious one being that he was dancing around with his father, having so much fun that he did not want to stop. His father is very drunk though, which leads us to believe that it is no just a fun story of him and his father dancing one night. What Roethke is really trying to show us, is the abusive relationship he had with his father.
"We romped until the pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf" (5-6). In numerous poems different readers vista a variety of ways to interpret what poems actually mean. This is very much true in Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz." The quote mentioned has caused many misconceptions about what the poem; "My Papa's Waltz" actually refers to. The two superior interpretations of critics are that Roethke's poem describes abuse or a dance. The abuse seems much more apparent in "My Papa's Waltz" because of the language that Roethke uses. The dance is interpreted because the boy is innocent and knows nothing else therefore the abuse seems normal. The drunkenness of his Papa, the mother's ignorance, and the way the child describes his abuse are very clear interpretations of mistreatment in Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz."
“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke is a representation of the journey toward reconciliation of the love and the fear that the speaker, a young boy, has for his father, and is an extended metaphor for the way that we balance the good and bad in our lives. Whilst reading this poem it is impossible to determine definitively whether it is truly about a dance or if the speaker is actually being abused. However, I don’t believe that it really matters either way. Actually, I believe it is this ambiguity and push and pull between the two extremes that creates the overall sense of struggle that comes with the reconciliation of the facets of the father and son’s relationship. This dance between love and fear is accentuated by Roethke’s use of ambiguous diction, end rhyme, and iambic trimeter.
My Papa’s Waltz presents a child’s telling of the waltz taking place between him and his father. As a verb, a waltz is “to move or walk in a lively and confident manner” (“Waltz”). The waltz described throughout the poem is quick and lively as the boy “hung on like death” (Roethke)
Notably, the denotation “romping” can mean, “to play roughly and energetically” (Google), but it can also have a connotation that the boy is hurt or in pain. Furthermore, stanza two also mentions the “mother’s countenance/ could not unfrown itself” (7- 8) which is unusual in the description of playing. While the father and son are playing, the mother is standing aside frowning. Her unhappiness contrasts the playful description of the waltz, which gives the poem its sense of seriousness. In other words, it tells the reader that there is much more happening here than the father and son playing. The drunkenness of the father has caused him to become careless and rough with the boy. The mother is clearly unhappy about the situation, but only watches as the two continue their
In “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, was a great poem that can mean many different things to many different people of this world. To me I think it was just a boy who just wanted to spend time with his dad before he has to go to bed. The boy probably does not get to spend time with his dad that much. The father probably works all day and all week and this is the only time the boy gets to spend with him. Roethke use of words in this poem is amazing. The use of the words in this story can mean different things to the reader. The first word to look at is the word waltz. In the dictionary the word waltz is a dance for a fast triple meter song. This is just what the father is doing with his son but his is drunk and dizzy. “But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy (Roethke)” The word death is not what people usually think but nobody can shake or get away from death. So the boy was holding on to his father where his father could not get away from him like the boy did not want him to go. “We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf (Roethke)” another word to understand is romped. The word romped means to play or frolic in a lively or boisterous manner. To go deeper in the definition boisterous means rough and noisy. While the father and the son are playing around dancing they are also messing up the house as well. Messing up the kitchen will make any mother mad and that is what happens next. Of out any other place in the house the kitchen is the woman’s throne room. “The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle; at every step you missed my right ear scraped a buckle (Roethke).” In lines 9-12 you can tell that the father has came back from a long day of work. The father’s job has to be doing something wi...
Although the dance between him and his father was rough and aggressive, the very fact that Roethke chose to write about the waltz indicates that it is a special moment he remembers sharing with his father. The poet has a remarkable ability to describe the moment and not his feelings. This is what makes "My Papa's Waltz" so interesting and leaves so much to interpretation.
The poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, is about a boy reminiscing about an incidence with his father. From the beginning, this poem states the conflict between a father and son involved in a rambunctious dance, but as it continues, the story suggests the dance may actually be a physical altercation. Within the line, “Such waltzing was not easy,” is the proposal this is not a singular incident, but rather a routine ritual between the boy and his father (Line 4). The speaker is an adult recollecting, to himself as the audience, a childhood memory of an incident with his father. As the poem opens, the child recalls his father engaging in act of the drinking whiskey to the extent that the fumes of his breath made him dizzy or lightheaded, as if the adrenaline coursing through his veins from wrestling or struggling with his father wasn’t enough to make him unsteady. The child is hanging on to his father as a way of protecting himself from the assault being inflicted upon him. When the narrator states within the simile, “But I hung on like death,” death symbolizes a force inescapable and not able to release its grasp (3). As the poem continues, the speaker uses the term “romped” to describe the movement within the waltz. A waltz is an elegant, flowing type of dance and one does not “romp” through a waltz. The two participants are causing such a ruckus, the mother’s pans slide off a shelf in the kitchen. As the mother looks on, she is silent with only a frown as an expression of her disapproval. The speaker states his father’s hand “was battered on one knuckle,” suggesting the hand had been injured possibly from another violent incident in the past (10). As the commotion continues, the child is “waltzed” into his bedroom, the ...
In the third and fourth lines, Roethke describes the boy trying to keep up with his father’s dance. He states, “But I hung on like death: / Such waltzing was not easy” (3-4). Roethke’s use of the simile “I hung on like death” implies that the waltz is extremely difficult and fast; however, he only states that it “was not easy.” The contrast between the diction in this two lines exemplifies the admiration the child has for his father. The child does not want to blame his father’s drunkenness for the difficulty of the waltz, so he downplays the difficulty instead. Roethke continues to use contrasting diction to emphasize the child’s love for his father. In the third stanza, Roethke describes the waltz, ‘At every step you missed / My right ear scraped a buckle” (11-12). Obviously, it is painful for the child to have his ear scraped at every missed step, but he refuses to speak up or stop because he loves dancing with his father. Lastly, and possibly the most dramatic of all the contrasts, is the last two lines of the poem. Roethke states, “Then waltzed me off to bed / Still clinging to your shirt” (15-16). Roethke uses of the word “clinging” offers two meaning. The boy must cling onto his father in order to not fall down, but at the same time, the boy clings to his father because he loves him so much. Roethke’s word choice throughout the boy,
The wording of the poem is general. It does not state exactly what is happening at times so all the readers can do is interpret what the poem is saying based on what the poem does say. One of the few things that is clear in the poem is that in the start of the poem, the father was drunk “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy” (1-2) and that the father grabbed his son and was waltzing with him. This could either mean that the father was getting physical with his son in a violent manner simply because he was under the influence, or was dancing with him. If they were just dancing, one can just imagine that the son just got on his father’s shoes, and the father was the one dancing. This is unclear simply because when one is drinking, the way they act is unpredictable. The wording of the poem makes it seem like the son is either using the word waltz to make the readers know that his drunken father was not being violent but showing affection in an uncommon way or to hide the violence that may have been happening.
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.