Summary Of First Awakenings

From the beginning of the poem, one can already sense that this poem seems dark since the poem introduced the father as drunk, as the line clearly goes like this: “The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy.” The father might have had too much to drink to make the little boy say, “it could make a small boy dizzy.” Then the word, “death”, is seen in the third line of the first stanza, and the line goes, “But I hung on like death.” I could imagine that the father might have lifted the boy up and started waltzing, but the boy just hung onto him like death as “death” hangs onto us. The way the father moved was not slow and smooth at all as the second verse indicates, “We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf.” The father might have been so drunk that he became so aggressive and moved or “dance” faster than he should have if they were in a ball dancing waltz. In addition, it was mentioned that the pans slid. As we all know, pans make loud noises when dropped; thus, it could mean that the setting in the poem is chaotic. Probably, the father kept dragging or straining the boy that the pans or other things in the kitchen start falling. …show more content…
The father held the boy’s wrist. Also, the boy mentioned that his father’s hand holding his wrist was battered on one knuckle. In this line, one can interpret that the father could be abusive. In waltz, one does not hold the other person on the wrist but on the hand. In addition, the introduction of word “battered” could mean that the father might have punched something or someone causing a knuckle to bruise. And in this stanza, it was mentioned that the boy’s ear was scraped by a buckle every step his father missed. It could mean that the buckle that the author is suggesting was the buckle of a belt. It could also mean that the boy might be being hauled along, so every step the father makes, he gets hit by the belt’s