Tone Of My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke’s poem, “My Papa’s Waltz,” revolved around the theme of a father-son relationship which was always left open to interpretation due his shift from positive to negative word tone. My Papa’s Waltz shows that sometimes the poems overall takeaway can be changed due to what light see the poem in. Roethke shows how a man reminisces on his past memories and describes his father, a man riddled with flaws. Through an analysis of each stanza, the word romp, and the last line of the poem, we can see how a change in voice can reveal how different the characters of the poem can seem to each other and especially to us.
In terms of affection, the speaker’s tone is one of reliance and contentment of his father. Even though his father is not …show more content…
His attitude for his father was absolute hate there was no ounce of love he could give to the wretched, abusive man he was required to call dad. He remembers how drunk he would always be and how much he would drink, “The Whiskey on your breath/Could make a small boy dizzy.” This shows that his father would drink so much that all he would have to do is get one whiff of his breath and that would be enough to make him feel woozy. He shows how his father never really focused in his family, he would just drink and drown him out.(Roethke 1-2) He was forced to put up with him because he was related by blood. Line 3 emphasizes how drunk his father really was, “But I hung on like death,” Dad was so drunk that the child felt woozy to the point that he had to hold on to his father.(Roethke Line 3) He expresses his resentment by just waiting and hanging on like death until it’s time to let go. Resentment is like you drinking poison but waiting for the other person to die. He has to drink the poison of a drunk father figure wait until he can be freed from his father’s clutches or that one day he drinks to the point of death. The word death can be a comparison to how a child hangs on to his parents, he will always hang on until his childhood dies and his teenage years are born where he finally has a little bit of freedom from his parents. Death can also be a way of telling us what will …show more content…
The Waltz is dance which starts off slow and shifts to another stage and reverts back to the original stage. The beginning stage is calm and slow, which symbolizes the initial phase of his father’s drunkenness. When the dance shifts it start to become a little more lively. which in this case is the speaker’s hatred/fear of his father growing, the dance reaches its peak when the father starts beating the son. The Waltz reverts back to its initial stage and so the does the father’s abuse. The father calms down and takes his son to his room while he is clinging to his shirt. The entire waltz starts from slow and calm, shifts to a little more lively move, and then reverts back to its slow pace from the beginning. When his son is clinging to his shirt it resembles how the Waltz is lead by the man and he guides how the dance progresses. It shows how his dad had complete control over his son and that his son could never do anything to stop his dad from his abuse. The best way to interpret the poem is by the way of the Waltz slow and languid, to more lively and boisterous, and then reverts back to its slow and languid pace. It starts off with affection, then descends into hatred, and then back to affection. The tone of the poem is as ambiguous as the dance