Overlook Everyone has memorable moments from their childhood. Some of them merry and others are quite the opposite. Theodore Roethke’s poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” is a quatrain poem about a memory of a boy waltzing with his father. The speaker is now a grown man writing this as a memory. In the poem, he relates his relationship with his father to a "waltz." The author's childhood unfolds as the "waltz" is performed. In this performance, the diction the author uses allows the reader to have many perspectives of the poem. This poem can be viewed in two ways. One way to look at this poem is that the young boy is having fun with his father waltzing. Some, on the other hand, believe this is a poem about rough housing his son. There are examples for both agreements throughout the poem. I can clearly see the positive loving side of the son in admiration to his faulty father. This poem was written in the 1940’s which remains a controversial decade that created the welfare state, bred a culture of immorality and self-indulgence. Young adults urged people to explore alternative patterns of work and domesticity. They disputed paths to deeper fulfillment, even those involving illicit drugs, could be justified, believing they were creating a new America. Taking that into account, Roethke’s father character is more understood being from this time period. When Theodore was only fourteen, his father passed, leaving him with a wound and a sense of dissatisfaction that he was able to relieve only near the end of his life being a major American 20th century poet. Although Roethke’s father and his son cherished each other there was conflict between them. Subconsciously, Roethke felt that his father had betrayed and abandoned him by dying; intentionally, he believed that he had a debt to his father which he had to repay. In “My Papa’s Waltz” Theodore Roethke employs imagery, meter, and irony to generate the feeling of admiration children have for their parents in the minds of his readers. The waltz is a smooth, progressive ballroom dance, normally performed primarily in close position. The imagery of the poem conveys the emotions of a boy as he experiences this late night dance with his father. A key to the understanding the poem comes from the title. It is the father’s waltz, and not the son’s dance showing the father’s dominance. This story looks back at a rather unpleasant memory from the boy’s past. The father in his drunk exhilaration picks up his son and begins a wild romp around the room. The sour smell of whiskey reeks from the father. The boys tries to overlook it but is made dizzy by the pungent odor. The key to the little boy’s fear comes with the description that he had to hang on for dear life as his father madly scrambled around the kitchen. The pair’s cavorting around the room made the pots and pans slide off the shelf. The mother’s observance of the scene tells the real story. She stands there with her countenance dominated by a frown that cannot be erased. Of course, this visual and auditory image brings to the reader more questions. The mother obviously should stop the dance for the boy’s sake. Maybe she knows that she will feel the father’s drunken wrath if she interferes. This image brings pain to both the boy and the reader. In the last image, the boy speaks directly to the father and tells him that he is hurting him with his belt buckle. Every time he stumbles the boy’s ear is scraped. While the pair waltz around the room, the father’s dirty hand beats out a tempo on the boy’s head. At last, the father dances the boy into his bed while the boy still clings onto the father’ shirt to keep from falling. The images in the poem convey the emotions that the boy feels as his father seems to not care whether the boy enjoys the dance or not. The word abuse comes to mind with the picture of the boy being wildly flung around the room. In addition, this may be the reason that the mother cannot stop the dance. She may also have felt the pounding of the rhythm of the father’s hand. With all of this imagery the reader still can sense a feeling of love coming from the author because of the boy still calling his father “Papa” and clinging to his father’s shirt as his father takes him to bed showing regardless of his clumsiness this is still his nightly routine before bed. In addition to imagery, the poem also has rhythm that matches the waltz dance. Waltzing music is quite upbeat and flows back and forth which mirrors the way this poem is laid out. The meter disturbingly echoes the tap of his father’s palm on the boy’s head, disrupting the meter of the poem, the waltz. The feeling one gets from reading this poem is that the narrator, at least at the time in which the poem is written, does not look at this experience as something bad. He tries to beautify the experience by making it a waltz. The meter is iambic trimeter each line has three beats just like in the waltz which is more readable, and lessening the effect of the drunkness and harm, making his father more human. Through all these incidents, the boy still “clings” to his father’s shirt when he is waltzed off to bed. Even the rough attention of a faulty father is a “love” that the boy clings to. Despite the hard and painful dance of his father’s waltz, it’s not a dance that the boy wants to surrender. Lastly adding to the meter, the author uses irony to lighten the subject of abuse through the poem. The first stanza introduces what is a heavily ironic tone that persists throughout the poem. A waltz sounds like a pleasant enough diversion, but the whiskey, the dizziness, and especially the word death collectively undercuts this assumption and the situation is not entirely lighthearted. The whiskey and dizzy lines are ironic because, while it is possible that the smell of “the whiskey” alone would make the child dizzy, being swung roughly (and even drunkenly) about is to blame too. Hanging on like death emphasizes the irony because the speaker’s father presents a certain danger, he “hangs on” to him here not necessarily “like death” but rather for dear life. The word death is thus ironic, but it makes the danger of the situation clear and offsets the notion that this is just a lighthearted waltz. The waltz should be effortless, on a literal level, because the speaker is just being swung around by his father. It isn’t smooth because, apparently, their lives together are burdensome. Continuing the tone of the first stanza, the word romped here is ironic because it makes the waltz sound carefree, yet the effect of this romping is to cause a violent, crashing disruption in their domestic world. The overall meaning of the poem is to convey that someone can love you even though they don't necessarily treat you right all the time. The speaker uses "clinging to your shirt" in order to revert back to this notion of this never fading love. Father’s are an important role in a family unit. That is why this poem stood out. First, a parent's attitude toward emotions can have a big impact on the way children learn to cope with feelings. Second, children whose parents respond to their emotions with patience and empathy do better in lots of ways, including academic achievement, better overall health, and stronger friendships, among other things.Children need a emotionally stable and available father to look up to. This poem “My Papa’s Waltz”, shows that regardless of a inadequate father figure the son still cherishes every moment he has with him.

Works Cited
Bain, Carl E., Jerome Beaty, and J. Paul Hunter. The Norton Introduction to Literature. New York: Norton, 1973. Print.
Baird, James. "Theodore Roethke." N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Feb. 2015. .