Love and Disgust in Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz": A Poem Analysis

Introduction: Love, Fear, and Memory

Love and hurt are two things we can never avoid, and we often carry memories of both into adulthood. A poem that proves this bittersweet point is "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke. The poem shows us a child's love and fear of a parent, and demonstrates how memory holds together the moment of the waltz in time — a moment that seems to encapsulate the speaker's entire childhood. In a touching poem that balances love and disgust, the speaker illustrates how bittersweet life is through tone and point-of-view.

Each stanza unravels the essence of the scenario. The story unfolds giving us the indication that the father had returned from the pub and, finding his sleeping son, had grabbed him to dance. The wife was disapproving, particularly as the pots began sliding, but the father did not care, drifting off into his self-focused dance-world and beating time on his son's head.

The waltz may be a metaphor for the wrestling or roughhousing that the father and son engage in. The imagery is playful. The meter and rhythm of the poem reflect the steps and movements of a waltz: a regular meter with a consistent cadence, an up-and-down movement in three-quarter time, and that pulse comes across clearly throughout the poem.

The Waltz as Metaphor

The waltz can also be a metaphor for the father's lifestyle. The ebb and flow of the waltz's pulsation as symbolized in the poem mirrors the rhythm of the father's own way of living (Underwood, 5).

The first two lines of the poem rapidly set the tone and portray a vivid picture of how the father must have appeared to the boy. There is the imagery of whiskey on the father's breath, for instance, and the phrase "I hung on like death," which denotes a child's fear of falling or a sense of tension. To the child, "such waltzing was not easy." The phrase "you beat time on my head" tells us something about the child's height as well as the father's strength.

Imagery and Point-of-View

The description of the hand is an evocative phrase, and "sliding" is again consistent with the dance movements of a waltz. The waltz is a form of rough horseplay, and Roethke shows both dimensions in his poem, with tension jostling against fun. The rhythmic romp of the waltz can be felt in the poem's iambic trimetrical quatrains:

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy. (lines 1–4)

Although the whiskey is mentioned, the father does not come off as simply a drunk. The poem is a small field of energy, with each stanza its own compact form of essence. It is a closed-form poem, and there is regularity and consistency — each stanza can actually be read with the same cadence as a moderately paced waltz.