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Analysis Of Stand By Theodore Roethke

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In the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, you see a child wanting a father’s love and care. The story opens up by talking about his father being a drunk. Although it does not directly say it, we can tell by the way the boy talks about his father, and his father’s actions. “The whiskey on your breath” (1) is the first line of the poem, which indicates someone talking about alcohol on someone’s breath. As the poem goes on you can start to pick up that it is getting told by a son. This son is shown to fight with his dad when the dad is drunk, but, by the end of the poem you can see that he still wants his dads love and approval. We see this want for love and acceptance in the movie Stand By Me directed by Rob Reiner. A character named Teddy, in the movie, has problems with his dad because he is an alcoholic, you are not given a lot of information about Teddy’s dad, and home life, but from what is told in the movie, you can tell Teddy’s father is not a good person, and seems to abuse Teddy. Teddy is like the boy in “My Papa’s Waltz” because there is not a lot of information given, yet you still seem like you painfully know everything that is going on with these two boys and their fathers. Even though Teddy has a dead beat father, when people say impolite things about him, Teddy gets very angry and always chooses to stand up for him, and defend him. Why does Teddy love his father so much? Why does he defend him after everything he has done to him?
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The relationship between father and son is one that is both sacred, yet complex as each side of the relationship faces hardships. This relationship between a son and his role model, a father and his child, is one, has its ups, but one must also know it has downs. In Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” Roethke’s use of ambiguity through diction allows room for the audience to interpret the text in a positive or a negative way, representing the relationship between a father and a son, which on the outside can be interpreted in an either positive or a negative way. Roethke’s use of diction creates an element of confusion for the audience of his poem.

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In the poem, My Papa’s Waltz, the speaker, Theodore Roethke, writes about a father and son waltzing. Further investigation suggests there is more going on than a waltz. The poet utilizes figure of speech and a negative toned vocabulary throughout the poem. Thus, alleviating the reader of the harsh truth of an abusive relationship whilst never dehumanizing the father.

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Hayden, now an adult realizes how much his father actually sacrificed for him and expected nothing in return, representing the theme of growing up and memory. In the poem “Papa’s Waltz”, Roethke tells us the story of his and his father’s relationship as a child, representing the theme of father/son relationships. In the poem Roethke explains this “waltz” that his father did, in reality, it is a tantrum, in a way, that his father did every time he drank, this represents the theme of violence in the poem. Throughout the poem “Those Winter Sundays”, the author talks about what it was like on those Sundays.

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