Comparing My Papa's Waltz And Half-Past Two

Similar to ‘Half-Past Two’ the poem ‘My Papa’s Waltz’ includes an authority figure of whom abuses their power over the child; in ‘Half-Past Two’ the teacher forgets about the child then when she remembers she attempts to blame the child for his own lateness, while in ‘My Papa’s Waltz’ the child and father are in a possibly physical and corporal relationship yet the child loves his father nonetheless. The strong feeling I will discuss in ‘My Papa’s Waltz’ is the fondness the child has of the father even though the child could be in a corporal relationship. The father is so intoxicated that the sheer smell of his breath could make the child ‘dizzy’ yet the child still waltzed as he ‘hung on like death’. This reinstates that the father is so intoxicated that the child must cling on to survive and to avoid …show more content…
The mother’s emotions of love and grief mirror that of the camp’s death and grief. Arguably the reader feels a strong sense of pathos to the mother more than the child due to her love and grief that we are witness to. In the first line of the poem the mother is compared to the ‘Madonna’ making the child Jesus. This strong comparison emphasises the mother’s strong love to her child. The alliteration of the letter ‘t’ emphasises the mother’s soft and loving nature.. The mother’s attempt to save her child’s life would be hopeless ‘…’ the use of ellipses gives a clue to the reader that the child’s death will be inevitable. The metaphor ‘humming in her eyes’ underlines the mother’s strong feelings of love and suffering. Her eyes almost seem to vibrate with tears; they are described as almost singing to the child as she ‘carefully’ parts his hair. Achebe evokes all sense of smell, sight and feeling so vividly that tears spring to the reader’s eyes too as we sympathise with her