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Theodore Roethke No Fun Waltz Analysis

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No Fun Waltz In his poem, “My Papa’s Waltz”, Theodore Roethke captures a memory of a time when his father was under the influence of alcohol. Roethke describes the endeavor with a negative tone and diction that is exemplified by the description of the protagonist’s father, mother, and self, there is one key factor in this story that keeps it in a playful tone and not a one-hundred percent negative poem, and that is Roethke. His personal description of this experience promotes an overwhelmingly positive contrast to the bleak and negative tone of the rest of the poem. It is not negative, but at the same time it is not positive, it is somewhere in between. The tone of the poem was set into a negative direction due to the situation at hand. Roethke’s father is under the influence of alcohol; that is made abundantly clear in lines 1 and 2 when Roethke writes, “The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy”(Roethke lines 1 & 2). It is difficult to find a positive tone in a story that involves a character that is, for lack of a better term, drunk. Alcohol is burdened with a negative public view and opinion that is shared among many people. The diction is also negative in this poem. When Roethke wrote such statements as, “But I hung on like death” and, “My mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself”, it seems as though he is describing the negative nature of this event during his life through what he is interpreting from his mother’s and father’s actions and mood(lines 3, 6 and 7). The one part of this poem that is in a completely different tone from the rest of the …show more content…

While the overall tone appears negative, the events within the story that directly affect Roethke have a positive and joyful overtone. Works Cited Roethke, Theodore. “My Papa’s Waltz.” Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2007. 856-57.

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The fact, that most people infer this poem to be about abuse is reasonable. however, according to Roethke’s biography, his father passed away due to cancer in 1923, when he was just 14, basically forcing him to become head of the family. In results to this, Roethke suffered from depression and other mental illnesses, and not to mention, his mental breakdown in 1935. Influenced by this tragic event, he then later wrote “My Papa’s Waltz” in 1942. Nevertheless, with his use of diction and sensory imagery, he successfully provided readers with an unexpected controversy.

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Further, Roethke uses word diction to set the overall tone for this poem. The word “waltz” which is used frequently throughout the text means “to dance in triple time performed by a couple who as a pair turn rhythmically around and around as they progress around the dance floor.” If Roethke was undergoing abuse, the author would choose unfavorable words to describe encounters with his father. Instead, Roethke uses heartening words to get his message across; which is that he will cherish the memorable times he shared with his father. Another word easily misinterpreted is “romped” used in line five, which gives readers a negative connotation; but in truth means “ to play roughly and energetically”

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The use of meter in Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” symbolizes the relationship between the speaker and their father. This poem is predominately in iambic trimeter. This meter follows the flow of the waltz, a dance that is in 3/4th. The iambic pattern is inconsistent throughout the poem and these slight changes in meter relate to the father’s waltz itself. The waltz “could make a small boy dizzy”, emphasizing the clumsiness of the father’s dance by having an amphibrach foot follow after an iambic foot (Roethke 2).

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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.

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In his poem “My Papa’s Waltz”, poet Theodore Roethke utilizes disturbing imagery and a gloomy tone to illustrate the idea that a person out of control can cause more damage to people surrounding them than themselves. The poem describes a young child who is forced to do the popular dance, The Waltz, by their father. The drunk father beats his son every time the child makes a mistake during the dance. During these events, the mother of the minor stands by helplessly.

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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.

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I have chosen Theodore Roethke's poetry, "My Papa's Waltz," for this discussion board. - The poem's use of imagery serves as its first literary component, and it uses sensitive language to create a clear visual image for the reader. We can see that the father's hand was described as "battered," while the hanging procedure was described using the word "waltzing." - Rhyming is the second literary technique utilized in the poem. The poem contains a unique form of lyricism.

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On lines 9, 10, and 13 it says “that hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle… you beat on my head.” These lines show how huge signs of abuse and can be seen as a gangster or the things that have happened in his life at that time. The neglect he received as a child and teenager led him to write some of his impressive work and some of the greatest poems in the world. This neglect was a great thing because it made be able to write about his life and that eventually made him successful. This success is seen as the themed of life in many of his other

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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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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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Theodore Roethke’s poem, “My Papa’s Waltz”, portrays a memory that the speaker has with his father in which they are dancing in the kitchen. The poem is in the perspective of the young boy describing the memory of a “waltz” he had with his father through a childlike point of view. The poem’s title attempts to portray a happy exchange between a father and son however the literary devices used display a counter perspective. Through the use of metaphors, tone, and diction in his poem, Roehke’s describes both a positive and negative memory in which it seems as the son desires a healthier relationship with his father, but encounters the negative impact of physical abuse. In “My Papa’s Waltz” both the positive and negative aspects of the relationship

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At the start of the poem, the narrator states, “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy;” (Roethke lines 1-2). The man described has clearly been drinking, and is most likely drunk. From this, the reader could infer that the poet included these lines for a reason. The most likely reason is that the father is an alcoholic, and cannot control his drinking problems. While the father was drunkenly dancing with his son, Roethke describes his mother by saying, “

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This gave him the opportunity to develop a unique writing style which bloomed into a naturalistic style of poetry. Roethke had a talent for analyzing the world and identifying things that would normally go unnoticed to most people. His main source of inspiration and imagery was drawn from the world of nature. In Roethke’s first volume “Open House” most of his poems were protected in their expression. These collections of poems were Roethke’s first pieces of work, so

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Theodore Roethke is a great poet, who uses figurative language to help the reader of his work to help grasp the topics that he writes about. In one of his most well known works, “My Papa’s Waltz,” he uses imagery and simile throughout that poem. However, his other poems practice figurative language the same amount or even more than “My Papa’s Waltz.” He often blends similes, imagery, and enjambment into many of his poems. The combination of figurative language helps the author create his own unique style in his writings.

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As an adult, growing up in that household, it is hard to find peace with their parents' drunk actions. It shows the consequences of alcohalism in a family with problems. In Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz,” he is talking about his childhood struggles with his alcoholic, abusive father. The dynamic of the father and son was

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