Theodore Roethke

The poem, "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke, depict a conflict between a father and a son. The son portray his father as a drunk person, and his relationship with his father wasn't a lovely one. They usually waltz, a smooth dance that require close position. The son usually smell whiskey in his father's breath, which mean that the son was somewhat tall or his father short enough. Though they didn't have a close relationship, Roethke never state that he didn't like his father, whether he…

a drunken father conveys both the fathers love for the child and the child’s fear of the overwhelming situation. The father is not truly abusing his son, however his binge drinking puts a strain on their relationship. In the poem, My Papa Waltz, Theodore reflects on his adolescent emotions of fear and also his unconditional love towards his father. This poem showed the emotions of fear and love through the use of word choice, imagery, and tone. Theodore’s word choice…

Readers of poetry usually understand that interpreting a poem often fosters disagreement. Theodore Roethke’s poem, “My Papa’s Waltz,” for example, generates frequent debate about the situation. This poem illustrates harmless play between a hard-working father and his young son. Not everyone who reads “My Papa’s Waltz” believes that the father is innocent and hard-working. There are many lines in the poem that can be portrayed in different ways. In the first stanza line three, “but I hung on…

Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” is a simple poem with a deeper meaning. When I first read this poem, I thought it was about a young boy dancing around the kitchen with his father. As I read it over again, I realized the sadness and despair tones of the poem. The young boy is blind to his father’s alcoholism. After analyzing the structure, diction, and overall theme of “My Papa’s Waltz”, I found a much darker meaning to this thought provoking poem. Roethke’s choice of structure has an…

The storyline of the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, goes way deeper than just dancing, but a negative vibe that shows abuse. For example, in the first stanza, it states, “The whiskey on your breath could make a young boy dizzy”. This explaining the man who is considered the papa, had too many drinks that would be considered drunk. Another line in the same stanza it says, “ But I hung on like death”. What person would be scared to dance with their father? Unless it wasn’t dancing…

The Importance of Friendship Friendship is, by definition, a relationship between two friends. Some believe that friendships are a necessity for human life. Joseph Conrad was a man who grew up not having many friends. As a young child he had missed school quite a bit from illnesses (Kathleen Wilson 200). This made it hard to have close relationships with other children. He did however gain a love for literature and the sea from his father at a young age (www.notablebiographies.com). This is…

Like paint to a canvas and sounds to music, words constructed in order create a beautiful piece of art called poetry that attempts to instill a piece of life in the reader using the word choices and order. In Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden the entire poem seems to be discussing a father who gets up early in the morning to start a fire. The first stanza discusses the specifics of the father’s labor. The second and third stanza, however, discuss the son’s reaction and relationship to the…

entertainment. Theodore Roethke uses the waltz to express people's longing for and the pursuit of a better life in his family. The author sets a particular setting at the beginning of poetry: “the whiskey on your breath / could make a small boy dizzy” which would be the reason for my papa’s waltz. Under the…

around in a dangerous way. Moreover, the second stanza provides a more positive tone by using the term “romped” which means that although the father was drunk, he was acting as a parental figure by playing around with his son. In the third stanza, Roethke states, “/at every step you missed/ my right ear scraped a buckle/” (lines 11-12). This is a metaphor that symbolizes the father’s failures as a parent while hurting his son during the process. Therefore, the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz,” reveals…

responsibility within the family. On the other hand, the father of “My Papa’s Waltz” has an opposite effect on the atmosphere of the home: “We romped until the pans / Slid from the kitten shelf / My mother’s countenance / Could not unfrown itself” (Roethke 5-8). Instead of a calm warmth, this father contributes a frenzied and chaotic heat. This chaos leads to tension in the family’s relations; the mother is clearly unhappy with the father’s actions. Overall, how the father contributes to the…