What would you do if you were really close with your father and then suddenly he dies?. That is hard to deal with right, and when the author, Theodore Roethke, was a child that was exactly what happened. The title of the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” directly sets the scene before the poem even starts. There are only three main characters in this poem and they are the speaker (Theodore Roethke), and his mom and dad. The story of the poem starts with Roethke and his drunken dad waltzing in the kitchen. They were making a mess and his mother wasn’t very happy. Then we get a brief description of what Roethke’s dad was like before he passed away. In my opinion the best way to better understand is to take a look at the diction and tone. If you take a look diction and tone used in each stanza of, “My Papa’s Waltz” you can really see the struggles Roethke had to go through as a child and what he was trying to say about his past experiences.

In the first stanza, we get a look at how Roethke’s father interacted with him when he was drunk. We find out that his father was drunk when the speaker says, “The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy Dizzy;”. (ln. 1-2) Also he says “But I Hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy.” (ln. 3-4) When Roethke uses the word “death” he is telling us that this was not the fondest memory of his childhood that it has haunted him ever since. The first half of this line is a simile, suggestive of the inescapable character of the father-son relationship." Simply identifying a device is not enough; you also need to interpret its significance in the context of the poem., when he says “like death”. When the author writes “waltzing wasn’t easy”, he is using a metaphor for his relationship struggles with his dad. The struggle came from wanting to love his dad, but also fearing his power. This whole stanza shows what his life was like as a kid, and how it was difficult to live with a drunk of a father. I’d say the main tones of the stanza were both serious and horror. As a result, the serious tone of this stanza is tinged with horror, which would continue to trouble the speaker for the rest of his life.

The second stanza tells us one of the reasons why he was partially scared of dancing with his drunk father. The stanza goes as follows, “We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself.” (ln 5-8) In line 5, the word romped is more of an accurate representation of the waltz, because of the drunken state of Roethke’s father. His father is romping and is making a huge mess by knocking pots and pans onto the kitchen floor. Also, this is the stanza in which we are introduced to the setting, the kitchen. The analysis of lines 7-8 is simple; she is happy inside that her son and husband or doing something together. However, she can’t show that she is happy because, she is quite possibly just scared of her husband and if her drunk husband sees her happiness he might retaliate. The tone in this stanza is gloomy, because there is some sort of cloud that hangs over Roethke and his mother. This cloud is full of gloom and restricts them from sharing their true emotions about his father. 

In the third stanza Roethke states, “The hand held my wrist Was battered on one Knuckle: At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle.” (ln 9-12) Take note on how the speaker says “The hand”, he never refers to his father this way, except for here. This is his way of saying he might be getting abused from his father without coming straight out and saying it. “Battered” creates a vivid image of how the father punched something hard and hurt his hand. I tend to believe that something was Roethke or his mom. This theory makes sense because, the next two lines talk about Roethke enduring damage to his ear. I’d say the tone here is a mixture of fear and reverence, because we can’t assume anything happened between the family, we can only be suspicious about what events actually occurred. 

Finally, stanza four is the culmination of the poem. The stanza goes as follows, “You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then Waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.” (ln 13-16) This continues the evidence that there is some sort of roughness taking place between the family. It’s odd because, the father is being described as an abuser and is really physical, however, he is also calmly waltzing with his son. Looking in the other direction, his father could have just been battered and dirty because, after all he did tend a green house. Finally, Roethke is waltzed to bed, while clinging to his father. The waltz was just a distraction in order to get his son (Roethke) to calm down and get into bed. We see that the boy doesn’t want to go to bed, because he is clinging onto his father. There is a little irony in this scene, because early in the text, Roethke was hanging onto his father like death but know he doesn’t want to let go. There are again two tones here, and they are cheerful and ironic. The scene is playful, because we find out the boy doesn’t want to let go of his loving father. However, that is also ironic, because of what was just described in the lines above.

In conclusion, that is why diction and tone are so important if one is to truly understand the entirety of the poem. Without them we couldn’t see how the relationship unfolds throughout the poem. The reader wouldn’t even think about the highs and lows, and just would think about the whole passage in a negative light. Diction helps the author show the reader what they are really trying to say-the underlying message of the passage. Tone helps the reader understand how the author is feeling about said message in the passage.
