My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

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Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" is a short poem about the memory of Roethke's father. This poem has a number of memories to tribute to Roethke's father. There are many good and bad memories about Roethke's dad with many examples to show us that he was a good and bad father.
In the first stanza the speaker gives us a description about his father. "The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy", the father was a drunk which really explains a lot in the rest of the poem. In the next line the speaker says "hung on like death", which is not a coincident that he clings onto his father like death because his father died when he was fifteen years old. In the second stanza, "we romped" is used to show how the father and son used to …show more content…

"The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle;" (line 12-13), this is when you can tell his father starts becoming more aggressive. The father is holding the little boys hand tightly, with his very rough knuckled hands. This poem is supposed to be about waltzing and dancing but in this stanza it is a very rough dance where he is most likely being dragged while dancing with his dad. Then in the next line the father was walking the son up the stairs while waltzing and his son kept scraping his ear against his belt buckle. What type of dad would let this happen to their son. The dad is obviously abusive at this point in the poem but it doesn't end there. "You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt" (line 17-18), this goes back referring to his rough knuckles and hands having to do something with what the dad does for a living. It also shows the aggressiveness of the dad, in the first line the son says u beat time on my head, this is showing me that the dad repeatedly time after time would beat his kid. The next line states that he got waltzed off to bed while he was clinging onto his dads shirt which has me thinking if he just got done beating his son and he just couldn't walk so he carried him to bed. The only nonaggressive part in this poem is when the son is finally in bed

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