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.
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 lines that give the impression that the boy is being abused, but if you read it carefully, he actually isn't. In the first stanza, lines 1-3, it gives you the feeling that the last thing he wants to be doing is dancing with his father. The words whiskey, dizzy, and death gives the whole stanza a negative tone to it. Because of that, most people don't bother to think that the lines can possibly mean he is just afraid to fall while enjoying a dance with his father.
Another line that you can misinterpret is line 12. Here you may think that the boy is getting hit because he is not dancing well, but the line is actually trying to create a different image. What the line is trying to say is that the boy was small at that time, and so due to his height, whenever his father missed a step, his ear was brushed against his father's belt.
Lastly, line 13 can be misinterpreted. In this line, people may think that the father is hurting him, but his father is actually tapping beats on his head to help him 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 promise to die for Ireland. Sleepily, they would all promise to die for Ireland, and if they were lucky, they'd get a penny. As you can see, both fathers did things they believed were harmless, yet they were memorable.
Overall, I think the poem was written to relive a memorable experience, rather than a bad one. I don't think that the poem has a hidden message of abuse like other people argue. The narrator's father did not mean any harm. In fact, I think the waltz was all meant to symbolize love.
