MY PAPA’S WALTZ

The poem My Papa’s Waltz has a typical structure. It has four stanzas, and every stanza has four lines. By observing the last word in each line, I noticed first that it has rhymes. Its rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH, and it has an iambic trimeter rhythm. It is in the form of a narration. It uses a first person speaker, the son.

Waltz, a word pertaining to a dance when heard. Yet in the poem of Theodore Roethke My Papa’s Waltz, it connotes another meaning and significance. Waltz is an extended simile for beating or a graceful term for torture rather. Like dance, beating is an art – it has intricate movements portrayed by a vigorous character.

In the first stanza, the speaker started to describe the smell of the whiskey on his father’s mouth. Looking back on our childhood days, we can easily distinguish the smelly breath of our fathers when they are drunk. As a child, we actually think of running away from that whiffy odor. Normally as kid, we don’t want to smell that odorous liquors our fathers drink. The sentence “But I hung on like death” is an exaggeration that indicates the awkwardness the speaker felt at that time. Waltzing here conveys a meaning of beating.

In the second stanza, the speaker exaggeratedly describes how he was beat by his drunken father. Notice that the speaker uses “…could not unfrown itself” in describing his mother’s reaction. I bet the last two lines in this paragraph suggest that the speaker’s mother wants to keep his son away from his drunken husband, but she could not do anything.

Looking at the third stanza, we can see that the words used denote brutality and violence. The speaker is somewhat saying there is a rumble inside their house. But it was actually him that was beaten by his father. His mother tried to help him, but she was also beat up too.

On the last stanza, the father hit his son on the head, smacked him hard. The speaker’s way of describing the father’s hand appears to be heavy. This could be his way of explicitly saying he was tortured that much. …Then waltzed me off to bed. Still clinging to your shirt. This implies that even though his father had caused him violence, still, his father will always be his father.

Theodore Roethke’s poem entitled My Papa’s Waltz depicts a story of a little boy who experienced being beaten by his drunken father. The speaker in this poem could be 7 to 10 years of age. Probably, at these age range, a typical kid knows how to recognize the smell of whiskey on his father’s mouth. And the words used in describing the beating part of the father sounds like the speaker is not an infant anymore, or he should not be the one speaking in this poem if he’s still an infant when this incident happened.

I find analyzing this poem a bit tricky. I really thought it was a blissful memories of his childhood days because waltz is somewhat concerning with joy. At first, it’s difficult to figure out what is that waltz on My Papa’s Waltz. But after reading and analyzing the poem stanza by stanza, after counting on the words that the speaker used, I slowly got the point.

The speaker in that poem is trying to present us how his drunken father mistreated him. It’s obviously a clear picture of violence. But it doesn’t seem to have a strong impact on the reader if one’s analysis will just count on its title.

The poem is a nostalgic narration of his childhood days. But Theodore used tricky terms to avoid issues like child abuse and violence, not to make it cliché. Brutality in this poem is not evidently seen on the first two stanzas, but the transition can be observed on the third paragraph. The speaker chose to use the word “waltz” instead of beating so that the poem wouldn’t appear horrifying to the reader.