
Is there a limit where love goes from being unconditional to nonexistent? Can one make up fond memories from a once traumatic experience? Or could one despise what was thought of as a good memory? Though it can be argued that “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke is a reflection of the author’s bad childhood, there is not enough evidence to conclude with that this is a bad memory at all. By looking at the rhymes, rhythm and title, we can see the good and healthy relationship between father and son, which most people do not see, and this is important because the words the author use is more often associated with bad relationships or childhood memories than with good.

Theodore Roethke takes us on a ride through his childhood universe, and he is doing that by dancing trough a poem. If you look at the poem’s title, which is “My Papa’s Waltz”, notice the word waltz. The word has several different meanings/interpretations; but the definition, according to Google’s own dictionary is; “A waltz is a dance in triple time performed by a couple who as a pair turn rhythmically around and around as they progress around the dance floor.” (1) But waltzing is also a verb, and therefore a way of walking. As the author proves/refers to in the last stanza: “Then waltzed me off to bed”().  This type of walk is often associated with alcohol. 

In this poem waltz is referred to the father’s drunken walk. The rhymes, though, in the end of every other sentence (ABAB) creates a rhythm which the author recognized as a waltz, in the meaning of the dance. This rhythm throughout the whole poem express positive energy, that is easy for the reader to catch up. So how do we know that the waltz between the little boy and his father is not a dance? And if it is not a dance, how can it be positive if you associate that type of walk with alcohol.

By looking at the words whiskey, battered, scraped, beat and dirt, it’s easy to argue that the poem is about something defective/unpleasant/harmful etc. None of these words are associated with good childhood memories. They don’t even fit into the word waltz. Whiskey, which is also known as the devil’s brew is never a good combination with small children. The words and actions we associate with beat and scraped are likely to be violence, physically abuse or pain. In a setting with a small boy and his parents, violence and pain caused by the father’s actions don’t tell a happy childhood story. By looking at the stanza; “At every step you missed. My right ear scraped a buckle” you can understand that this waltz, is not a normal dance. There’s a reason why the father missed a step, and it’s probably because he was drunk.

From which point this poem is told and written is extremely important for the meaning and interpretation of it. Why has the author chosen these words over those/others? There is clearly a thought behind every word in the text, so how do we interpret them according to the author.

The poem is obviously not written by a small child. There are too many words that a small boy doesn’t know or doesn’t understand the meaning of. This text is written by an adult/a grown up, who in this case seems to look back on his childhood.  The author has chosen to write from an adult’s point of view, but tells the story through the eyes of a very young boy. He does that to show the reader that he is now aware of what his parents, initially exposed him to when he was just a child. But by telling the story through the young boy’s eyes, he tells the reader that he didn’t know what was going on then. By looking at the first stanza where the author writes: “But I hung on like death”, the small boy is hanging on to his dad even though he smells of whiskey. This argument is demonstrated further by the last stanza in the poem, which goes like this: “Still clinging to your shirt”.  Both sentences rely on the words he chooses. Hung and clinging. He tells a story about a boy who loves his father even though he had been physically abused several times. We call that unconditional love. Especially if the little boy were aware of the abuse, by the time it happened, which I don’t think he was.

We don’t know for sure if this poem is a reflection of Roethkes childhood, but we know for sure that both his father and his uncle died when Theodore was still a teenager. His father suffered from cancer and eventually lost the battle, while his uncle committed suicide. It is no secret that Roethke struggled with mental illness after those incidents, and of course, his literature was affected by it. Cancer can be a result of being an alcoholic, so it’s not unlikely that this is a short version of Roethkes childhood and relationships to his father.

What happened in the poem didn’t affect the small boy by the time it happened, but as the boy got older he started to see what was right and what was wrong. He experienced other teenager’s parents, and became slightly more aware of how a parent should act. When he realized what his dad actually did to him when he was younger, he got upset. And this might have lead to his mental illness. Even though you can’t forgive your father for physically abusing you, he is still your father. And in some way, you can argue that it is better to have a dad, than not to have a dad at all. And looking back on his childhood he might have thought, “The devil I knew, was better then the devil I didn’t.”
