In the Poem “My Papa’s Waltz”, poet Theodore Roethke utilizes vivid, dark imagery to create to create a serious and sad tone that illustrates the idea that exposure to people with bad habits can influence habits of your own. In the poem a child is dancing with his father. Theodore uses imagery to make the poem sad. Lines like, “My mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself” and “At every step you missed my ear scraped a buckle” makes it look like this kid is abused and makes the tone sad. The perspective makes the poem very serious because it makes you look at yourself as this kids father. It forces you to think about it seriously by making you a bad father.
The father is the character in this poem that has bad habits, for example he struggles