My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

My Papa’s Waltz

My Papa’s Waltz is a poem gracefully written by the critically acclaimed, Theodore Roethke, in which he projects his internalized emotional confusion through the innocent soul of a young boy, whose thoughts reflect that of Roethke’s former childhood self. The account expressed in the poem is one of controversy, occurring between the young boy and his father; the encounter is either abusive or playful. I confidently believe, to a greater or lesser degree, that the correct interpretation of the mentioned encounter is that of playfulness; but, by the same token, remains cloaked by the child’s ambivalent feelings toward his father’s dipsomaniacal propensity. The youthful innocence of the boy in My Papa’s Waltz is not the victim

In addition, the fact that he added that the father was missing steps prior to stating the injury he received from the belt, lends further credence to the notion that he pitied his father’s alcoholism. The latter is supported by the following argument: when one is drunk, he or she is not their true selves; and since the father was drunk in the poem, we may conclude that he was not his true self. From this, we may adduce that the boy can distinguish between his father’s personality when he is either drunk or sober, provided we can negate the notion that he is always drunk and never sober when around his son. We see that the father isn’t always inebriated: “(His hand) Was battered on one knuckle; / With a palm caked hard by dirt,” (10, 14). This makes it apparent that the father is a working man, who, assumedly, has a steady job, and thus cannot always be drunk due to work responsibilities. This, however, seems unthwartable, because there is the inevitable possibility that the father is inebriated always when around his son, because he may return from a workday drunk, which is the only time the boy may see him. Subsequently, we cannot assume that he returns home from a workday, due to a limited amount of information; for he may work at his abode. Thus, if we can prove that the father works at home, then, following from the deduction that he must be sober while working, then we can

It was established earlier that if the father in the poem works at home, then his son will have contact with him while he is sober. Due to the statement regarding the fatherly figures in My Papa’s Waltz, we must conclude that the character in the poem must necessarily embody his father. The occupation of the character in the poem is a laborer who had “a palm caked hard by dirt,” which suggests that he is a gardener-just like Roethke’s father (14).

Since we concluded that the father in My Papa’s Waltz works at home, we must consequently conclude that he must be sober while doing so. Thence, the son has contact with his father while sober, and that he makes a clear distinction between the sober and drunk sides of his father. The dichotomy presented to the young boy is what causes the confusion and ambivalent emotions toward his