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Analysis Of My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

751 Words4 Pages

As we grow older, small moments we shared with our parents seem to take on a new light. Memories we once viewed with fondness or with uncertainty can evolve and change our perceptions and lend a new tone to these memories. This is shown in Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” which tells of an encounter between father and son. The poem opens with the father arriving home after a night of drinking whiskey. Once home, he and his son waltz around the room. The son remembers the strong smell of whiskey on his father’s breath and how he clung to him. While dancing, they make a mess in the kitchen and knock pans out of their placement, to the mother’s unhappiness. The father is intoxicated and this causes him to be clumsy and to be rough with his son. His father towards the end of their dance guides him back to his room while he clings to him. …show more content…

The phrasing of the lines and various alternatives in which they can be perceived, by Roethke serve to further cement this idea. The narrator states, “at every step you missed / My right ear scraped a buckle” (11-12). This line, in particular, implies that he is being beaten by his father with a belt. Another line that is used as literal, in part, evidence for this stance is when his father “beat time on his head” (13). To some, the mother’s unhappiness is due not to them creating a mess in the kitchen, but due to the abuse her son is experiencing. Despite this, the implications of child abuse are those taken from the very surface. The poem is not an account of child abuse but a reflection on Roethke’s father, more specifically the sadness he felt following his father’s

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