My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

In “My Papa’s Waltz,” Theodore Roethke writes about a childhood memory interpreting his relationship with his father. Although the poem comes off as a compassionate tale about a man coming home and dancing with his son, Roethke actually depicted his recollections as a child in an abusive household. Growing up in the 1900’s, Roethke experienced stages of depression, stemming from the loss of his father and uncle, self esteem issues, and years of misery. Roethke channeled his agony into dedicating his time to academics and pursuing his career in writing. In spite of being abused, Roethke managed to overcome his past traumas to become a brilliant writer. The experiences he went through would later help define him as a poet.

From a young age,

Roethke was considered a prodigy in the classroom. As a member of the Junior Red Cross in high school, he went on to deliver a speech that would be translated into 26 different languages. Seemingly on the right track, Roethke witnessed many misfortunes that lead to his depression. Born on May 25, 1908, Theodore lived with his mother and father on a greenhouse that they owned with his uncle. Though his father passed away from cancer when Roethke was 14, he sculpted an image that he faced abuse as a child, changing the period of when he experienced his first dose of tragedy. A reader can infer that Roethke’s father was an alcoholic after analyzing the first stanza of his poem, “The whiskey on your breath/Could make a small boy dizzy.”
This implication allows us to imagine the father as disoriented and putting his child at risk by roughhousing with him.

Throughout the poem, Roethke hints subtly that his father and he dancing to a waltz was in fact a physical altercation. His use of vocabulary, including the words “romped” (5), “battered”(10), and “beat”(13) all suggest negative connotations, though Roethke still keeps an upbeat tone. Yet his rhyming scheme can be used in a lighthearted manner, Roethke’s command of language could be used as an illusion to deceive the reader. The innocence he portrays is an obvious indicator that he was not aware of the actual abuse taking place at the time, but he recognized it after the

fact.
Initially, a child doesn’t recognize the abusive factors being displayed but as time passes and the child reaches higher levels of consciousness, the child begins to understand what is going on around them.

This can cause confusion for any child because they are not able to perceive their loving parent as someone who wants to cause harm to them. For this reason, Roethke continues to refer to his abusive father as “papa”, known as a term of endearment. Long-term effects of child abuse leave scars that result in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, according to Carolyn Knight who is the author of Working with Adult Survivors of Childhood Trauma. She goes as far to say that children are unable to cope with the psychological issues of what is going around them. They begin to repress their memories of the situations they are placed in and face it head on years later when it begins to

resurface.
As the author mentioned, he “Hung on like death” (3) to his father’s shirt, making an implication that he could not keep up with his fathers' inebriated dancing. Although the child tries to alter the image of his father, the stanza about his knuckles covered in bruises (stanza10) give the reader the impression that the father was involved in a psychical altercation prior to arriving home. On the other hand, his stanza referring to the dirt caked on the palm of the fathers’ hands (stanza 14) implies that he just returned home from a long day of work and is enjoying a drink. When the night ends, young Roethke still claims to be clinging to his father’s shirts entailing his fear towards his father, mixed with the naïve affection he craves.
Moreover, Roethke ostensibly implies that his mother was not a supportive member in his life. “My mother’s countenance/Could not unfrown itself.”(8) This is an explicit detail showing that his mother did not interfere with the mistreatment and instead, stood as a frightened bystander. Amid the Women’s Suffrage Movement, domestic abuse in the 19th century was one of the many driving factors to start this movement, according to Wendy Moore, author of Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes. She states that abuse towards women was “widely tolerated” and evidently a social norm. Roethke’s mother did not interfere with her husband, yet showed signs of discomfort.
It is also implied that Roethke was undoubtedly faced with abuse as a child, but that was not the only traumatic experience he endure. The child in the poem is presumably no more than 5 years old. “My right ear scraped a buckle;” (stanza 12) a visual of a small boy. When Roethke was 14, not only did his abuser pass away from cancer, his uncle also committed suicide amidst the same time. Seemingly surrounded by death, he then descended into a depression.