My Papa's Waltz And Dulce Et Decorum Est

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Recommended: The metaphor in the second verse of Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum est

A memory can be a powerful thing to a person. Memories cultivate our perceptions of someone you are related to or something such as the topic of war. Also a memory that means something to you may have a different meaning to someone else. Such as when I was younger I have a memory of my brother in law being in the paper for putting out an enormous fire and saved a life. I thought of him as a hero and remember it being a joyous memory but to him it was the opposite. He remembers it as having to jump through windows into blazing fire, fighting off the crowd who had pulled their cars over the fire hose, and walking in to find it was too late for a person living in the house. After have putting out the fire, he walked out to raging crowd screaming at them they did not do everything they could. The memory was an unpleasant and unsettling one to him. In “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen people see their memories as one way but it means the complete opposite to them. …show more content…

He was a little boy soaking up the time he was getting with his father. Even though his father had “whiskey” on his breath and it was enough to “make a small boy dizzy,” Theodore “hung” on as they danced. If this was an unpleasant memory Roethke would not be grasping onto his father if the situation was a horrid memory. They were “waltzing” and even though it was difficult he and his father “romped’ all around. Theodore’s father had a “battered…knuckle” and a “palm caked hard by dirt” symbolizing he is a laborer. As a laborer he is never home so Theodore cherishes the time he does get with his father even if he is in a drunken state. When the dad “waltzed” him off to bed but Theodore was not wanting the joyful moment to

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