The poem, My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke is a quite nostalgic poem in which the speaker in the poem a young boy remembers precisely how he and his father used to dance. The speaker who is a young boy who enjoys dancing with his father even though the father smell of whiskey makes him uncomfortable, but he enjoys to dance with him. it is stated clearly in the first stanza when he says, “the whiskey on your breath/ could make a small boy dizzy/, but I hung on like death.” Even though he the speaker enjoyed to dance he did not like the way the, father handled him during the dance. The dance which began as a slow and orderly but as time goes on it gets rough as they stumble in everything that is in their space. For him, such a waltz was not good for him because he is only a child and he wants everything to be nice and slow. All is evident when the speaker says, “we romped until the pans/ slid from the kitchen shelf.” This shows how their dancing could get out of control.
Even though the mother of the speaker, was not happy with the way the drunken father handled the boy. She was also not comfortable with the idea her house was being torn apart by the two. As they had a fixed pattern of movement in the house that made everything that encounters in their space to be thrown away. The mother who tries to oppose their dance is not in a position to separate the two as the boy has clung to the father shirt as they move from place to place.
The mother of the speaker who tries to get the child off the father lands into a problem which makes a scene like there is tension. For a father who wants a little bit of fin with his son is encounter a mother who feels like he is mishandling her baby. As the mother gets angry because she fills that the father cannot contain himself, this brews a lot of tension that creates a dangerous atmosphere between the mother and the father (Roethke,1948). It is stated in stanza three, “the hand that held my wrist/ was battered on one knuckle.” This shows us how tension is between the two, but the speaker is the victim of the war that is going on. As he receives the battering from both the mother and the father, who are fighting to have him.
The speaker does not leave his father’s shirt amid all this battering; he clung more tightly. Even though he feels the effect of all these things he is comfortable and do not feel sad or being regretful on all these things. At last, after everything has calmed down his father escorts him to the bed staggering. The speaker also is happy with the way things are, and he is happy going to bed. It is clear in the last stanza, “you beat time on my head/ with a palm caked hard by dirt/ then waltz me off to bed/ still clinging to your shirt.” This shows that amid all the tension between the speaker parent he still feel good dancing and being at his father’s hand.
The poem tries to explore on how the speaker is in a good relationship with his father. No matter how drunk his father his he still fills good to dance with him. No matter how hard his father’s hands might be, he will waltz with him. The speaker tries to communicate that there is nothing good to him like his father no one can put them apart.
Work cited
Roethke, theodore. My papa’s waltz. Michigan: The Michigan Press, 1948. Document.
