Tone Of My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

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Theodore Roethke writes in “My Papa’s Waltz” about what many would read as a morbid recollection of childhood trauma, resting under a veil of innocent language and tone. The work is what it is - poetry. So, while the theme or the tone may seem childlike and light hearted at times, it interprets as dark once one dissects the work.
Reading the poem over once, one can pick out a line, or even certain words in each stanza that indicate a new meaning. In line 3: “like death” indicates desperation and fear. In line line 7: “mother’s countenance” is a mature phrase, it's not language one would use to describe a mother’s playful disapproval of before-bedtime excitement. In the third stanza “battered” and “scraped” suggest violence and pain. In addition, they are both words with sharp and blunt sounds, phonetically placing a feeling of harshness within the text. Similarly, in the fourth stanza, “beat time on my head” and “still clinging to your shirt” creates the image and feeling of abuse, as if a father literally “beats,” but to avoid falling to the ground he must cling to his abuser. …show more content…

Presumably, his father is an alcoholic, and that compels him to abuse his son, as intoxication commonly results in anger or violence. Moreover, in line 14 “A palm caked hard by dirt” creates the idea that the father works hard, perhaps the family endures financial hardship. The stress of being the sole provider may weigh on him heavily, and in pair with the alcohol, this causes him to take his grievances out on his

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