As children we have the upmost admiration for our parents, but as we become teenagers this admiration becomes hatred. Seeing only our parent’s flaws we often believe we know what’s best for ourselves and sometimes what best for them. When we become adults and start to raze children of our own we soon become aware that what we may have viewed as flaws when we were teenagers where really the things that we would truly remember about our parents. These imperfections becoming assets in a parent’s arsenal, more often than not using them self’s as an example of what not to be or using their mistakes as teaching points for their children. Even with their lack of education and high tempers the imperfect parental …show more content…
When compared to the nurturing mother presented in “Mother to Son” or the strong, father figure presented in “Those Winter Sundays”, the father figure in Roethke’s piece comes off as an aggressive alcoholic with little to no care about the happiness of his family. The pome appears to be a metaphor of one particular beating in which the speaker’s father gave is described as a waltz. With closer examination it seems as if the speaker does not look back at this experience as something bad, but as if it was a fond memory. The speaker uses words like “waltz” and “romped” that give the pome a lighter tone (Roethke 602). This lighter tone is also conveyed in the grace and airiness of the waltz itself, which is also conveyed in the rhythm of the pome, this suggest that what is actually accruing is celebration. The Father is described as a hardworking man, his hands “battered on one knuckle” and palms “caked hard by dirt” (Roethke 602). Because of this readers can conclude that the father is simply celebrating the end of his long work weak by coming home late from the bar, still smelling of the whisky he has so rightfully errand. Drunk not only on whisky but on his love for the music that plays, he picks up his son and begins to excitedly waltz around his home. Swinging his son around in a dizzying waltz, just playfully dancing. This explains the speaker’s fondness of this memory, the speaker and their father celebrating the end of a long work weak by dancing through the house. This could also explain the mothers disapproving frown, as an attempt to hold back laughter as they pay little to no attention to the chaos there causing in their home, as the “pans/slid from the kitchen shelf(s)” (Roethke