Theodore Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz” is an interesting poem because of the different ways it can be interpreted. While there are many ways readers interpret the poem, the two extremes usually lie between an alcoholic father abusing his son and a loving father playfully rough housing with his son. However, when I read and interpreted the poem for myself, my optimistic tendencies at first lead me to read the poem with the brighter meaning in mind, but as I kept reading my perception of the poem soon turned dark. Even though I can see how “My Papa’s Waltz” can be interpreted as either of the two extremes, my view tends to fall more towards the idea that the father is abusing his son.
In the beginning of the poem, the speaker says, “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy” (Roethke 1-2). For the child to become dizzy just from the breath of his father, the father must be very drunk. Usually casual drinkers do not …show more content…
The stanza begins as the speaker says, “The hand that held my wrist / Was battered on one knuckle” (9-10). When I imagine a father and son playing together, the last thing I imagine is the father’s rough, battered hand firmly grasping the son’s small wrist. Usually, if my mother ever held my wrist that way when I was a child, it probably meant I was in trouble and she was trying to keep me from escaping her wrath. It makes much more sense for the father to be abusing son rather than playing with him in this stanza because of the tight grip he has on the son to keep him from running. After these lines the speaker states, “At every step you missed / My right ear scraped a buckle” (11-12). I can only picture this scenario as the father beating his son with a belt and whenever he missed wherever he intended the belt to land, the buckle of the belt would hit the son in the
In the beginning of the poem, the speaker says, “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy” (Roethke 1-2). For the child to become dizzy just from the breath of his father, the father must be very drunk. Usually casual drinkers do not …show more content…
The stanza begins as the speaker says, “The hand that held my wrist / Was battered on one knuckle” (9-10). When I imagine a father and son playing together, the last thing I imagine is the father’s rough, battered hand firmly grasping the son’s small wrist. Usually, if my mother ever held my wrist that way when I was a child, it probably meant I was in trouble and she was trying to keep me from escaping her wrath. It makes much more sense for the father to be abusing son rather than playing with him in this stanza because of the tight grip he has on the son to keep him from running. After these lines the speaker states, “At every step you missed / My right ear scraped a buckle” (11-12). I can only picture this scenario as the father beating his son with a belt and whenever he missed wherever he intended the belt to land, the buckle of the belt would hit the son in the