My Papas Waltz :: essays research papers

A Drunken DanceTheodore Roethkes My Papas Waltz tells the reader of a subatomic boys memory of his father. It explains how his father is intoxicated and the scene that goes along with it, using the word waltz to describe it.In the first two lines, it recounts the tint of his fathers breath and the extent to which it reeked The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy (1-2). As the third and twenty-five percent lines are read, a picture of a small boy hanging onto his father is instilled in the readers mind But I hung on like death / Such waltzing was non easy (3-4). We would not normally associate this particular image with a waltz, a word Websters mental lexicon defines as a ballroom dance in 3/4 time with strong accent on the first beat and a staple fibre pattern of step-step-close. How can such an elegant dance be used to describe such a scene?The fifth and sixth lines describe, sarcastically, a impish incident where pans fall off the kitchen shelf We romped un til the pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf (5-6). Finally the boys mother comes into play during the seventh and eight lines. Her facial expression Could not unfrown itself (8). This tells us that the mother was displeased but its rather discerning that she made no attempt at intervening. We would normally think of a mothers love as unconditional and willing to do anything for her son. It really shows the degree of fear the father must have embedded into the mother with his actions.The eleventh finished fourteenth lines describe actual, bodily harm done to the young boy by way of his fathers acts At every step you bemused / My right ear scraped a buckle / You beat time on my head / With a palm caked hard by dirt (11-14). We can in truth picture the boy clinging to his father as his ear scrapes the fathers belt buckle and his watch bumps hard onto the boys head. I swear this poem tells a rather disturbing story of a boys time with his father in a very sarcastic way. I believe the theme to it is the sarcasm itself. It shows how some things that are bad can be described as good.