My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

536 Words2 Pages

Everyone sees the world according to his or her own experiences. In the same way, poetry can be read and understood according to the experiences of the reader. Theodore Roethke, a poet-in-residence at the University of Washington, who was educated at both Harvard and Michigan University, wrote a poem titled “My Papa’s Waltz”. When reading My Papa’s Waltz, readers tend to have the perspective that the poem was either about a father who was abusive, or simply a happy memory of a father rough-housing his son. After analysis, the strongest evidence in the diction and the tone conveys that the poem is about the confusion a son feels over the drunken abusive behavior exhibited by his father. “My Papa’s Waltz” begins with a young boy who is the speaker describing the difficulty of dancing with his father while he is drunk. As they clumsily danced, the kitchen became a mess with pans sliding from the shelves, yet the mother only watched with an unhappy expression. Gripping the son by the wrist, the father held him close enough that he scraped his ear on his belt buckle. Eventually, the drunken father dances the boy to bed. …show more content…

The confusion of the son is shown in diction when the potent “whiskey” on the breath of his father makes him “dizzy”. Although the boy is dancing with his father, the poem becomes more solemn with the diction of clinging on “like death” and describing the dancing as “not easy”. The reasoning of the boy is slipping into uncertainty and disarray just as the “pans slid from the kitchen shelf”. The mother is watching with a “countenance” that “could not unfrown itself” because she desires to help but could potentially be afraid that the father will turn his drunken wrath on her; therefore she watches, despondent and

Open Document