From abuse to carelessness, poems “The Whipping” by Robert Hayden and “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke both convey a sense of violence from the parent towards the son. Both poems implicate a potential abusive past of the abusers, similarly, which can be the cause of their acts of violence. The physical abusive, however, is not shown to be uncommon but to be very frequent. Although the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” persuades a precious father-son moment, its literal focus is predominantly on the father’s drunken aggression towards the boy. The speaker’s experience in these two poems are each described in different ways, but both with the suspicion of undeserving punishment of abuse. “The Whipping” and “My Papa’s Waltz” show immense differences