The narrator of My Papa's Waltz Theodore Roethke discusses a very heartbreaking and distressful situation when looking back at his childhood remembering a scene (perhaps one frequently enacted) where he and his drunken father waltz wildly through the house. An interpretation of "My Papa's Waltz" takes into account the complexity of what the speaker feels that are bought about by the father. A dance is supposed to bring two people closer but here it has a darker side to it that makes one realize the powerfully unsettling emotion under the surface of the poem. Theodore Roethke manipulates our emotional response to the poem through a number of literary conventions, some of which play on the conventions of a waltz. The speaker sets a picture by establishing frightening images followed by some comforting ones. The speaker begins a sort of perturbing image "The whiskey on your breath /could make a small boy dizzy". By this line one can imagine the little boys plight of having to go along with this waltz.

The second stanza begins with words "We romped until the pans/slid from the kitchen shelf". Although delight in the romp are obvious those feelings are shadowe

. Another example of the vivid imaginary is "at every step you missed my right ear scrapped a buckle". This verse allows the reader to visualize the boy's height therefore giving us a more vivid picture of this man who is so absorbed by his drunkenness that he doesn't notice the harm he is doing to his son's ear. Another statement further engrave the visions in the readers mind like where the narrator states "My mothers countenance /could not unfrown itself" . Here the one gets the picture of an unhappy woman dealing with escapades oh her drunken husband and ponders on the thought of whether the child is being exposed to an unhealthy relationship between his parents. Although the wild romp is scary it is also thrilling and the boy is a bit dizzy from the fumes on his fathers breath . He may also be dizzy psychologically because his relationship with his father is so sporadic and confusing "such waltzing" meaning not only the dance but the relationship between the boy and his father is not easy for him. These ambiguous images hint at the awareness of difficulty.

Alcoholic fathers are basically fathers that are absent from their homes and this usually brings about a chain reaction of delimits. Boys look up to their fathers as role models and absence of this "role mode" can lead to an unsavory characters to mold themselves after. Girls tend to hate men due to unconscious resentme

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Theodore Roethke, Papa's Waltz, Thank God, Relationsips Fathers, papa's waltz, alcoholic fathers, father poem, theodore roethke,
Approximate Word count = 948
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)