Another Revised Response on My Papa's Waltz

My Papa's Waltz

By Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

In the poem, My Papa's Waltz, the narrator is reliving an experience of his past, that includes his father. Some people say that his father is abusing him, and others may say they are just dancing. Both ideas can be proven with lines from the poem. I don't think the father is abusing his son, even though throughout the poem it gives you the impression of that.

In the poem, there are at least three lines that give the impression that the boy is being abused, but if you read it carefully, he actually isn't. When you first read line 3, “but I hung on like death”, it gives you the feeling that the last thing he wants do be doing is dancing with his father. I think that he is clinging on "like death" because he is afraid to fall while enjoying a dance with his father.  Another line that you can misinterpret are lines 11 and 12. Here you may think that he is getting hit because he is not dancing well, but it is actually trying to say that he was very small at that time, so his ear was brushed against his fathers buckle every once in a while. The last line is line 13. Here, people may think that his father is hurting him, but he is actually tapping beats on his head to dance the waltz. 

This poem reminded me of the book Angela's Ashes. Sometimes Frank's father would come home drunk and wake up Frank and his brothers just to make them all promise to die for Ireland. Sleepily, they would all promise to die for Ireland, and if they were lucky, they'd get a penny. This poem reminded me of the book Angela's Ashes because, both fathers did things they believed were harmless. One father danced with his son and the other made them promise to die for Ireland. What I find a coincidence is that both sons ended up writing about the experience. Theodore Roethke wrote My Papa's Waltz, and Frank McCourt wrote his memoir, Angela's Ashes.

Overall, I think the poem was written to relive a memorable experience, rather than a bad one. The narrator's father did not mean any harm. In fact, I think it was all meant to symbolize love.