My Papa's Waltz - What Does It Mean?

 

 

My Papa's Waltz

By Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz” from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright 1942 by Hearst Magazines, Inc 

What I Think:

I just want to say that I found Theodore Roethke's My Papa's Waltz to be a very well-written and strangely beautiful piece of poetry. The work conveys very deep and complicated emotions which can only be fully understood by someone who can relate to the author’s words. We know immediately that the speaker is a “small boy.” The poem’s title tells us that the boy and his father are dancing a waltz. We know that the title is not a metaphor for something else (such as child abuse) because at line 11 the boy says, “At every step you missed,” indicating that this is indeed a dance, and that the father keeps messing up his moves. If we backtrack to the very first line, we see that the father is drunk, which is expressed by “The whiskey on your breath.” He was in fact very drunk, as lines five and six say that they were dancing so wildly that the “pans slid from the kitchen shelf.” The boy’s naive behavior in continuing to dance with his drunken father even while he “beats time on [his] head” and makes it to where his “mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself” tells us that the boy loves his father. Furthermore, we see the boy’s deep love for his father as he “clings on to his shirt” while he waltzes him off to bed.

   The speaker’s usual stance suggests that waltzing with his drunken father before bed time is a common occurrence; in fact, to go so far as to appoint his father his very own waltz further suggests that his father may have been drunk more often than he was sober. The boy has no clue that what his beloved father is doing is wrong.

Happy Readings,

CSH