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My Papa's Waltz Meaning

650 Words3 Pages

In the story My Papa’s Waltz, the narrator has described the relationship with the father without actually saying it. The meaning of the story is hidden within the words that is about an abusive father. Without any negative signs of abuse that is not stated in the words, but the meaning is all about abuse. The narrator disguised the meaning by going with music and having a rhyme poem. Abuse was never stated to have a more meaning why the narrator never thought it was abuse. The mother has nothing but a “countenance” expression to the actions the father is doing to his child. It can show that the narrator didn’t know anything better but to love. Although the poem may sound simple and easy to understand, My Papa’s Waltz is really a complex story …show more content…

There is a cycle of the negative actions that cause his father to get drunk, however, his father feelings has been expressed by actions not words. For example, the says “you beat time on my head” meaning the how rough the father has been hitting him (Roethke 968). The narrator makes it same to make it fit with the meter of the music to be disguised. Dancing of the music which seems to be more of a beating to the narrator that says “at every step you missed/ my right ear scraped a buckle” (Roethke 969). As he is dancing with the narrator the father would hit him if he messes up. His father hits the narrator with a belt to his ear without the father actually knowing because his is drunk. The abusive father is doing all of this actions without actually knowing, but still letting go of his fraustion from his work towards his son. The narrator does not state any abusive towards his relationship with his father making it parental love and abusive relationship. This would first look like a dance with his father, however; My Papa’s Waltz is really a unbreakable relationship with his parent that makes the story more of dance to hide the actually meaning to show both sides of the story. The boy interrupts what it seems what is happens which is a dance, but in reality it is a beaten that he can’t

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