

Why do we embrace the negative actions inflicted on us by our loved ones? In Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, the author compares a father’s violent abuse against his son to a dance. The boy in the poem is in fact Theodore Roethke as a child. Roethke was only fifteen when his father died of cancer. He had very few memories with his father because of the short time he had with him. One of his most vivid and impactful memories was this waltz. After reading this poem, one may assess this in a negative tone. However, the boy in the story seems to love this waltz and is looking back on this as a positive memory. He reminisces on his childhood reliving this flashback with his father. The child looks past his father’s flaws and loves him dearly no matter what. This is a story of unconditional love, not abuse. 

A waltz is a dance where two partners turn rhythmically around and around, progressively moving about the dance floor. Roethke calls it a romp instead of a waltz, showing how ungraceful it is. “At every step you missed / My right ear scraped a buckle”. Whenever the father would mess up a step in the dance, the boy would pay for it with a painful “scrape”. The “whisky” on the father’s breath and his clumsy demeanor indicate that alcohol is a driving force behind this abuse. With alcoholism there is a tendency of outbursts of unpredictable rage and violence; this theme is set for the reader at the very beginning with the lines “The whisky on your breath/ Could make a small boy dizzy”. Theodore Roethke had a conflicting relationship with his father in which love and fear were always present.

With his father drunk, the waltz was extremely difficult which is presented in the lines, “But I hung on like death / Such waltzing wasn’t easy”. The boy realizes that there is something very wrong with this waltz. The use of the word “death” brings a dark tone to an otherwise carefree dance. This is a very strong line because death is not something to take lightly. Death is inescapable and forever. The boy needed to hang on like death because his father was probably unsteady on his feet and swinging him around a tad too roughly. The boy getting hit with the belt buckle and lack of control of the dance makes it very challenging. The author could be explaining that not only the waltz is difficult but so is the entire relationship with the father and son. The father seems abusive, and the boy can finally get some joy as he is clinging onto his dad getting spun around for a few short minutes. Although the boy is getting roughed up, he doesn’t look at this as a bad thing. The father shows his love differently than most and regardless of the dysfunctional relationship, the young boy loves his father greatly. It wasn’t easy for the son to partake in the waltz, but he was so intrigued by the fun he was having that he did not care. The boy is showing how he loves his father, no matter how bad his breath is, or how many times he gets struck on the ear, he will not let go. 

There is also a theory that the young boy was clinging onto his father because he didn’t want him and his mother getting into an argument. This is displayed in the lines, “My mother’s countenance / Could not unfrown itself”. She was clearly upset how drunk her husband was and how he was knocking off the pans from the kitchen shelf making a ruckus. The mother refused to speak up and tell the boy to go to bed because she was either secretly admiring her child getting along with his father, or because her husband was drunk and the abuse to the boy could have quickly turned on herself. The reason behind the father coming home so drunk may be that he has long work days, so his son is not able to spend much time with him. Being heavily intoxicated, the father blames his own missteps in the waltz on the boy. This could possibly relate to his failures in the real world and him craving someone to blame. After a stressful day of work, he wants to relax and forget with a few drinks, however, his alcoholic tendencies lead him to drinking too much which results in these somewhat twisted waltzes with his son.

The reader’s mood through the poem changes from the beginning to the end. At first, the reader is a little distraught. A drunk father carelessly swinging his child around the kitchen, knocking off pans and hurting his son is not uplifting. Surprisingly, however, by the final stanza, the reader realizes that the boy almost refuses to let go. He does not want to go to bed. The young boy wants to stay with his father and continue to romp around the kitchen. Getting slightly banged up is a small price to pay for getting the chance to dance with his father for another few minutes. Similar to the mood, the author’s tone changes throughout the poem and in different stanzas there are distinct tones. The author wants to make it obvious that there are positive and negative behaviors. The story he is telling as a whole has a meaning only the author can truly know because he experienced it personally.

The author is writing this to express how doing something that mentally, physically or emotionally hurts you, is sometimes worth it to be with the person that you love. The boy could show fear of his drunk and abusive father. Instead, he embraces him, and does not want to let go. People show their love in different ways, and the young boy knows the mutual love he and his father have for each other. Getting a buckle to the ear or smelling his father’s horrendous breath are miniscule consequences to the fantastic gift of being able to spend time with his papa. 