
Abuse is not usually seen as a waltz, but Theodore Roethke definitely turned the typical fun dance into a traumatic memory. While Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz,” can be perceived as story about a young boy dancing with his drunk father, it can be argued that it is actually much more haunting. It is almost as though the reader is witnessing an abusive situation while keeping a childlike perspective. This also provokes more emotion in the poem because it reminds the reader just how young the boy is and how he doesn’t know that what is happening to him is actually very wrong. Roethke also carefully uses this dancing theme by not only referring to this abuse as a dance, but also by repetitive rhymes which flow throughout the poem that create a dance feeling. By using these tactics, analogies, and references to a waltz, Roethke ironically creates a more serious tone for the poem.

At the very beginning of the poem, Roethke depicts a drunk father “With whiskey on your breath” that “Could make a small boy dizzy,” and immediately the reader knows that the situation is not safe (1-2). Due to Roethke’s choice of wording, the reader can analyze that “such waltzing” is no dance when the boy is hanging “on like death” (3-4). In dances, such as the waltz, beats are important in keeping up with each step a dancer takes, but beating “time on my head / With a palm caked hard by dirt” is definitely not a dance move, rather it is physical abuse (13-14). 

It proves even more that this poem is about abuse when the speaker mentions how his “mother’s countenance / Could not unfrown itself” (7-8). Why would a mother be frowning if she is watching a father and son dancing, even if the father did happen to be drunk? In many cases of physical abuse between a father and a son, mothers usually stand back unable to defend the children because the father could just as easily abuse her as well. Of course since Roethke is so young in the poem, he still doesn’t quite grasp the idea that what his father is doing to him is wrong, and he is confused why his mother looks so unhappy. Roethke loves his father and expects so much from him, and that love is what prevents him from seeing any harm being done to him. However, now that Roethke is older and looks back on the situation, he realizes why his mother was so upset and why she unfortunately did not and could not intervene.

Roethke not only uses the waltz as a metaphor for abuse but he also creates a coherence in the poem that resembles beats in such a dance or even a heartbeat to resemble the love young Roethke had for his father. By using rythmic beats and words, he actually is able to make the reader feel as though they are dancing along with the boy in the poem even though the boy in the poem is not dancing at all but rather being abused. These beats do not necessarily have to be seen as a dance beat because they can also refer to a heart beat. As stated before, Roethke was much too young and naïve to know that such abuse is unethical, and he has so much hope and expectations for his father, like any young boy would. It is these two tactics that are frightening for the reader to experience because it comes off so effortlessly playful, but once the reader realizes what is actually happening beyond these metaphors, it becomes much more realistic and haunting. 

Throughout Theodore Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz,” he uses the type of dance, the waltz, as a metaphor to abuse. The poem seems to be written in a young boy’s point of view which creates a youthful, happy vibe towards the poem, and by using a dance and rhymes, that also brings good vibes to the poem. However, once the reader realizes the harmful situation the boy is in, the references to a dance actually cause a haunting effect and makes the reader more uncomfortable than had Roethke just talked about abuse plainly. 
