My Papa's Waltz Literary Devices

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Relationship Between a Father and Son
Theodore Roethke was a famous poet in mid-century America. He was born in Michigan to Helen and Otto Roethke. While growing up his family depended on his father’s greenhouse that the family owned. His father loved to do anything that had to do with the outdoors. He spent many hours of his life working outside planting plants in the greenhouse. Roethke viewed his father as a stern man, who was serious almost all the time. So, when he wrote the poem “My Papa Waltz”, it was probably one of the few memories he had of his father dancing and acting silly. Theodore Roethke used psychoanalytic critism when he wrote “My Papa’s Waltz”, he looked back on an old childhood memory and wrote about it from his adult point of view. Most of Roethke’s poems used themes that contained power and vision. He also liked to emphasize on rhythm throughout his poems. In the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” he used an A, B, A, B rhyme scheme. The poem has a rhythm that goes smoothly with their “waltz”. Theodore Roethke uses imagery, symbolism, and metaphor in his poem “My Papa’s Waltz” to show the relationship between a father and son, it also …show more content…

“The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy” (Roethke 1-2) This shows that the father and son must be standing close by one another, in order for the son to be able to smell the alcohol coming from his breath. The next two lines give an example of a metaphor being used. “But I hung on like death Such waltzing was not easy” (Roethke 3-4) The author is showing that their “waltz” is hard because his father is drunk and staggering all over the place. When he said “hung on like death” he was sending the message that since his father is a drunk he never knows what to expect from him, which can make the waltz scary. He holds on to him tightly with a death grip just in case he gets a little too crazy or

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