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Compare And Contrast Sylvia Plath And My Papa's Waltz

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Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” are similar because they focus on the same subject. However, they differ in how the speakers’ feel about their relationship with their parent(s). In Plath’s “Daddy”, the speaker is a daughter thinking about how her father treated her. She tells about how she felt trapped by him and how she tried to ‘kill’ him, line 6 of the poem, but he dies before she has a chance. The ending of Plath’s poem implies that she got married to a man like her father. In Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, the speaker seems to be an adult reminiscing his childhood through a metaphor of a dance. The poem suggests that the boy was abused and the mother stood by without doing much about it. Three topics that …show more content…

Meanwhile, Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” the speaker implies abuse through a metaphor about dancing, where, in lines 5, 6, and 11- 13 the speaker vaguely mentions abuse, saying “We romped until the pans/ slid from the kitchen shelf”, “at every step you missed/ my right ear scraped a buckle./ you beat time on my head.” These lines imply the father is abusive, boisterously beating the child in the kitchen so much so that pans fell, without actually saying so. In both poems, the speaker experiences abuse from the father figure in their …show more content…

Comparing and contrasting Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, one finds the two poems are similar with their themes of abuse, yet contrasting with how the themes are portrayed. Furthermore, the speaker 's feelings toward their fathers’ in each poem contrast. One speaker was hurt by the father and the other speaker was indifferent about how he was treated by his father. The fathers’ feelings toward the children are also different despite how each treated the child. Both poems accurately portray the parent-child relationships within an abusive home, even if they have different

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The poem, My Papa’s Waltz, is one of Theodore Roethke’s most renowned poems. A father and son are dancing in the kitchen really close to the boy’s bed time and the mother is displeased by the racket and noise. The father is drunk and his cheery attitude is amplified by the whisky he had earlier on. Tone and Style Roethke's style of poetry is an interesting mix of introspection, intense lyricism, and naturalism. Some of his poems revolved around his own subconscious emotions and thoughts.

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374 Words | 2 Pages

In the Poem “My Papa’s Waltz;” written by Theodore Roethke, the poem presents a somber tone through its usage of negative words and persuasive poetic craft. Throughout the poem “My Papa’s Waltz,” Theodore Roethke uses forceful words such as death, romped, unfrown, battered, and beat to provide the reader with tenderness for the character. This choice of words is used by the author likely to create the image of someone being abused and harmed. Consequently, many will argue that the story is about a son dancing with his drunken father. Some examples of this include when Roethke writes “The Whiskey on your breath.

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792 Words | 4 Pages

Roethke’s particular word choices have connotations which alternate from abusive to affectionate while also working to both extend the waltz metaphor. The speaker depicts the situation with words which imply an abusive scenario, including “beat,” “scraped,” “battered,” and “death” (Roethke 3, 10, 12, 13). Scattered throughout the poem between this violent languages are words that hold meanings that typically are associated with fun and liveliness, such as “romped,” “unfrowned,” and even “waltzed” (Roethke 5, 8, 15). These word choices seem to contradict each other, but because of their place in the poem’s context the meaning of this language is vague. The word “waltzing” suggests that the father and the speaker are dancing happily together, but because the word follows “death,” the meaning could also more along the lines of fighting, in terms of child abuse (Roethke 4,

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Theodore Roetke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz” portrays a boy in dance with his father. Much of the poem is left up to interpretation, however, evidence suggests that the boy in the poem is having a negative experience due to the poet’s focus on the boy’s clinging and inability to keep up, the mother’s dissatisfaction, and the rough nature of the dance. The boy in the poem struggles to keep up with his father from the beginning of the dance to the conclusion. At the beginning of the poem Roetke writes, “But I hung on like death: / Such waltzing was not easy” (lines 3-4).

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We all tend to have issues with our dads, but we are sometimes ignorant of the benefits of being with dad. Two authors discuss their relationships in each of their respective essays: Brad Manning with “Arm Wrestling with My Father” and Sarah Vowell with “Shooting Dad.” I will be comparing/contrasting he essays on: the conflict each author had with their dad, the feelings that encompassed from it, and the outcome of their relationships. To begin, Manning talks about his frustrations with his dad. He would always beat Manning in arm wrestling, and would take every opportunity to fix Manning’s physical skills.

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Theodore Roethke’s poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” explores a father-child dynamic through a classic dance, the waltz. The poem includes descriptions that make the dance appear rough, sloppy, and carefree, leading the poem to be up to a reader’s interpretation. The way Roethke wrote this poem gives the impression that this is a dance that echoes the best parts of the speaker and father’s relationship, the love they have for one another. Though the poem expresses underlying issues in this relationship, at this moment, the father seems to be a hardworking man who loves his son and wants to have fun dancing after a long day. The waltz is one of the most wonderful moments in their relationship.

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“My Papa’s Waltz” Message of Abuse The conflicting interpretations of Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz," explores whether the poem speaks on a scene of abuse or a loving memory between a father and son. Based on the reader this poem can be seen as a little boy reliving a good childhood memory or painfully revisiting an act of abuse. The reader's perspective greatly influences how the poem is perceived, as it can evoke varying emotions and reactions. However, when looking deep into the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” reveals a man speaking on the abuse, father’s alcoholism, and the childhood trauma he survived when he was a child.

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The poem “A Story” by Li-Young Lee depicts the complex relationship between a boy and his father when the boy asks his father for a story and he can’t come up with one. When you’re a parent your main focus is to make your child happy and to meet all the expectations your child meets. When you come to realize a certain expectation can’t satisfy the person you love your reaction should automatically be to question what would happen if you never end up satisfying them. When the father does this he realizes the outcome isn’t what he’d hope for. He then finally realizes that he still has time to meet that expectation and he isn’t being rushed.

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838 Words | 4 Pages

“Daddy” by Sylvia Plath is a daughter’s overdue words to her dead father. As a vessel for the speaker’s emotional outbreak, the poem alternates among her idolation and fear, and her love and rejection for him, feelings that she constantly struggles between. The work reveals the destructive nature of the memory of the speaker’s father, and portrays her final attempt to break free of its shadow. The poem is one big apostrophe directed at the speaker’s dead father, and in doing so she regresses into her childhood self.

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934 Words | 4 Pages

Nothing epitomizes an edgy early teen phase like a healthy obsession with Sylvia Plath. She was one of the first poets to bear personal issues as subject matter, and it continues to touch people of all ages who relate to her struggles and love poetry that digs deep into personal issues. The question is, what were her lasting effects on the culture of American literature? In Plath’s widely revered and often discussed poem, “Daddy,” she grapples with a conflicting view of her father.

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709 Words | 3 Pages

In “Daddy”, poet Sylvia Plath uses imagery and allusion to show her bad relationship she had with her father, how her life was miserable while she was writing the poem, and blaming her father for her status by comparing her depression to the holocaust during World War 2, thereby suggesting that her pain is greater than a world catastrophe. Plath starts off with Imagery in lines 6-8 “Daddy, I have had to kill you./you died before I had time-/Marble-heavy, a bag full of god”. In this sentence Plath talks about how her father is deceased, and describing him as a known and strong godly figure with the words “Marble-heavy” and “god.” This line also goes back to the holocaust allusion that is shown in the poem. When Hitler ruled Germany, he was also described as a godly figure.

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830 Words | 4 Pages

parent’s words or actions leave behind an astounding effect on a child. Whether positive or negative, those are moments that shape and alter the child’s life. In Sylvia Plath’s poem Daddy, the story tells how the narrator copes and continues her life after her father dies. Even after his harsh treatment and rude demeanor while he was alive, his stills is an entity that she herself lives her life by. Plath conveys the narrator’s of confinement with the use of metaphors, repetition, and allusion throughout the poem.

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907 Words | 4 Pages

In the poem, “Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, the speaker, a young girl, shows herself as a victim who trying to once and for all set herself free from her “daddy 's” grasp. Though her daddy died when she was only 10 years old, the ghost of him still haunts her. In this poem the speaker creates a figurative image of her father, using strands of metaphors and analogies, to describe the relationship she, the speaker, had with her father. The girl in the poem seems to not know sincerely how to feel towards her father as she ends up going through this journey throughout the poem, discovering just who her father truly was. At a young age, the narrator viewed her father as this godly figure, to her, he was a “bag full of god”.

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