My Papa’s Waltz

The poem “My Papa’s Waltz” can easily be interpreted in two different ways. Before our class discussion, I was convinced that this was a somber poem that expressed a son’s love for his father, despite his father’s alcoholism and abusive ways. Although the poem states playful interactions between the father and son, the majority of the poem focuses on the father’s drunken aggression towards the boy. After discussing the poem in class, I realized, it is about a young boy, remembering a night with his father when they danced around the house aggressively. With this analysis, there is no intentional abuse on the father’s part, yet there is clear evidence of alcoholism, (“The whiskey on your breath”). Now I believe the poem is about that of my second interpretation, but both interpretations are satisfactory.

There is a wide amount of evidence that, “My Papa’s Waltz,” is the story a young boy revealing the trouble he has lived through with his alcoholic father, while still possessing a great love for his dad. The boy would then be the narrator of “My Papa’s Waltz” and thus the son of an alcoholic father. It is easy to focus on the physical abuse, and anger the father has, which was targeted at the boy. In the first line of the poem, the son is speaking to his dad and says, “The whiskey on your breath/could make a small boy dizzy.” The son is telling his father, that his drinking is a problem, and the boy is worried. In the next line, he says, “But I held on like death: such waltzing was not easy.” Apparently, the thoughts here are aiming towards abuse. The son is telling his father, that he struggled to survive (mentally and physically) in the home, but did everything he could to try and survive and rise above the problem. The pain that comes through in this sentence is subtle, yet intense. In the next stanza, the tone begins to change. The violent acts, change to fun, rough-housing. The son expresses how him and his father, physically fooled around in the kitchen. There is a sense of happiness and joy here. But this feeling of joy does not last long, for the tone changes again in stanza three when the son returns to speaking of his father’s beatings. Beatings are reasonably interpreted because the son says that the father held his wrist. The grabbing of a wrist suggests rough interaction. If the father was not trying to harm the boy, it would be more reasonable that he would hold his hand, not his wrist. The boy also suggests that his father seemed to brush him with a buckle (“At every step you missed/My right ear scraped a buckle”). This could refer to a time when the father was drunk, and went to strike his son using a belt, missing his backside completely, and instead, hit his ear. The negative tone continues in stanza four when the son says, “You beat time on my head/with a palm caked hard by dirt.” But in the second half of the sentence the mood and tone change with, “Then you waltzed me off to bed/Still clinging to your shirt.” The stanza starts off with a explanation of the torture the boy underwent, but ends with the boy confessing love for his father, regardless of his faults. After reading this poem, it is obvious that even though the son has been beat around by his dad, he still loves him and has is longing to be loved in return. Thus, even after a violent battle, the son remains loyal to his father, and clings to him, in search of love and compassion.

It is understandable that the young boy is remembering a night when he and his father waltzed around the home. The father is intoxicated, but that does not make him an alcoholic. The poem is one full setting, each stanza seems to be a different period of time. The waltzing is still rough, yet not intentional. The father holding the boy by the wrist now shows the father is holding him by the wrist due to the dance. Yet, it is still unclear if it is due to the dance or violence. The last stanza influenced me that the poem is a mix of a violent tale I had once believed, but also a happy memory. The last line stanza, “You beat time on my head/ With a palm caked hard by dirt/Then waltzed me off to bed/Still clinging to your shirt.” Here the father is helping his son keep time with the steps, and the boy is grasping on to his father’s shirt, and while holding on to his dad, they continue to waltz to bed.