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Response To My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

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(My Papa’s Waltz) Response
The warm feeling of love and affection from a parent is supposed to be a cheerful experience, but in Theodore Roethke poem, love is battling fear. The narrator of this poem portrays over compassion from a drunken father who engages in a bizarre waltz, with his fearful child. The controversy of this abnormal experience from a father to his child is describes on the endurance of the child throughout the poem of painful dancing that ended with mix emotion. The allegory in this poem is deep with hidden meaning on how to deal with abuse from a love one. The love for a parent or a sibling is a hard burden to endure when abuse comes into a situation causing fear and despair.
The simple gesture of a dancing is one way to win a child over with bonding emotions, but to forcefully pull or drag a person is abuse. The opening of the poem begins at a high risk factor of child endangerment with the smell of alcohol coming from the father's breath. Some assumption in the poem is that this encounter of drunken behavior of the father is not the first time this acquired or the last. This assumption comes from the …show more content…

In the case of the drunken father, who feels rambunctious enough to enter the home and engage in an inappropriate manner of dancing, that leads to a physical abuse of a child in his home. The meaning of love is deep in this poem for a child to hold on even when face with fear never gave up on an abuse full father. The undeniable fact, in this poem is that a person who suffering from alcoholism needs to wake up and realize the negative effect he is causing his family with his addiction. There is an old saying that time can heal wounds, but memories are a thing that can destroy families forever. The poem “My Papa’s Waltz” is design to open the mind and heart of those suffering from negative love and repair what is missing before it is too

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In “My Papa’s Waltz,” poet Theodore Roethke uses sensory details and ambiguous language to persuade both the boy and the reader that the boy still loves his father, despite him being an alcoholic. On the third sentence of the first stanza, Roethke uses ambiguous language by stating: “But I hung on like death. Such waltzing was not easy.” Although this plainly means that the boy was holding onto his father without ease, it can be interpreted in another way; the boy still loves his father, even though it is hard to love him with his alcoholism at times, and the boy still loves his father very much. The boy is reflecting on this idea while waltzing with his

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The imagery of “My Papas Waltz” can clearly be understood as a father waltzing with his son in the kitchen, tapping the beat too his son’s head, and his ear scraping his buckle against his child’s ear. The poem is playful when the poem says, “At every step you missed/ My right ear scraped a buckle” (Roethke lines 11-12).

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Every story consists of different elements, such as characters, plotlines, and settings. Nonetheless, many stories portray the same messages or ideas. “My Papa’s Waltz,” by Theodore Roethke, depicts a reckless father who is loved by his child, while “Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden, depicts a hardworking father whose child is indifferent to him. Though the poems depict exceptionally different childhoods, both contribute to the idea that perceptions of parents alter as one grows into adulthood. Both poems use harsh words and critical tones in order to convey this notion, however in “My Papa’s Waltz,” they signify the recklessness of the father and how the narrator perceives his father as an adult, while in “Those Winter Sundays,” they

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In the final analysis, most readers of this poem tend to deduce a dark theme of physical violence due to its tone, word choice and imagery. Nonetherless, Roethke balances positive and negative tones of the poem to give it a rich and ambiguous quality. The exceeding tendency to paint the picture of child abuse deprives it, of this quality. “My Papa’s Waltz,” illustrates a special and powerful moment, shared between a father and a son through a waltz.

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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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My papa’s waltz his/her dad was drunk while his son/daughter trying to teach waltz and in Grape sherbet his/her dad made recipe of swirled snow. “But I hung on like death/ Such waltzing was not easy” (line 3 and 4). “Dad appears with his

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The father/son relationship are shown in both poems. Both are adults reflecting on their past. “My Papa’s Waltz” is about how the father would dance daily with the son. Although it was painful when he sometimes missed a step and his “right ear scraped a buckle”, this was a memorable memory for the son (Line 8). The poem has a happy tone of the sons childhood days.

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The first two lines of the poem paint a picture that play to our sense of smell, “The whiskey on your breath. Could make a small boy dizzy.” (1-2) His father is obviously inebriated past

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In the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz”, Theodore Roethke illustrates the complex relationship between a little boy and his father by juxtaposing images of love and violence through word choices that portray feelings of fear yet affection for his father. Roethke’s shifting tone encompasses distress and a sense admiration that suggests the complexities of violence both physically and emotionally for the undercurrents of his father and son relationship. The poem begins with a series of negative images, each of which are considered violent and undesirable in a family. For example, “The whiskey on your breath” suggests alcoholism, and “Could make a small boy dizzy” emphasizes that a boy is suffering from the effects of the alcoholic parent.

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