Child abuse is physical, sexual, or psychological mistreatment or neglect of a child, especially by a parent.  Experiencing abuse as a child can cause a person to go through many internal and external pains, and many survivors like to tell their story.  In My Papa’s Waltz Theodore Roethke uses rhythm, imagery, metaphor, and themes of his postmodern contemporaries to uncover the true meaning of the poem, child abuse. 

One of the many literary devices Roethke uses in My Papa’s Waltz is rhythm.  The rhythm of the poem, much like their “waltz”, is choppy and not always even.  Roethke uses rhythm to illustrate the macabre dance shared by the father and son.  It can also be used to illustrate the relationship between the father and son; very rocky, and unsteady.  In the first stanza Roethke says “The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy; but I hung on like death” which gives the reader insight on the father and son’s relationship.  Instantly the reader can visualize a drunken father with his small son clinging on to him “like death” and realize that this is not a happy moment and that the father and son don’t have the best relationship.  In the second stanza Roethke states “We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf” and that sets the tone for the rhythm of the piece.  That line confirms that the “dance” is very rough and is all over the place, the reader is able to visualize them knocking down pans, and sense that there is an altercation happening and that they’re not just dancing. 

In the poem Roethke also uses imagery to illustrate the violent relationship between the father and his son.  In the third stanza he talks about the fathers bruised knuckle, “The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle” which alludes to fighting because that’s typically how someone would get a bruised knuckle.  Also in that line he depicts an image of the father holding the son’s wrist.  In a dance you would normally hold your partner’s hand, but him holding the boy’s wrist gives the images of somebody trying to prevent a person from escaping.  Roethke also says in the fourth stanza “You beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt” this line allows the reader to visualize the father’s dirty hand beating on the son’s head.  In a waltz the person wouldn’t normally keep the tempo by beating on the other person’s head so this line also hints at some kind of physical altercation between the father and son.  When Roethke states “My mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself” the reader can instantly visualize the mother with a displeased look on her face about the events taking place.   If this was a happy moment, although they are knocking things down, she would be proud of the moment between the father and son but she can’t get the frown off of her face. 

In My Papa’s Waltz Theodore Roethke also uses metaphor to compare the father and son’s altercation to a Waltz .  The entire piece is basically a metaphor from title to finish.  Roethke is referring to what they’re doing as a dance when in actuality, they are tussling. The father is so drunk that the boy is feeling woozy “The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy”.  They are knocking things down and the mom can’t stop frowning “We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf; my mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself”.  There is no music and the only steps are missed steps “At every step you missed my right ear scraped a buckle”. The father is beating on the son’s head “You beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt”.  Throughout the entire poem he tries to make it seem like it’s a happy moment but everything he says has a negative connotation. 

Another thing Roethke uses in My Papa’s Waltz is the themes of his postmodern contemporaries. Roethke is a postmodern author and the postmodernism era came about after the horrors of World War II stripped away all innocence and all security.  Literary works from the postmodern era often went against the traditional norms.  So where poets in the past may have written about the perfect father, Roethke went against that and wrote about his father’s alcoholism and abuse as stated in the first stanza “The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy”.  He was exposing the ugly truth of his home and many American homes of the day.  Also, where art and literature in past eras had long flowing sentences and such, the postmodern writers often rejected that form and embraced shorted, simpler sentence structure like in My Papa’s Waltz.   So given the time period that the poem was written in, it is highly unlikely that Roethke was talking about a happy moment with his father. 

Like many survivors of child abuse Roethke also suffered from mental illness in his teenage years, especially after the death of his father and uncle, up until his death.  Roethke wants to convince reader that the piece is about a happy moment between a father and son, kind of like a person who has experienced child abuse would.  They want to discuss what they’ve been through but because of fear or other reasons, they try to make it seem as if everything is fine.  Although Roethke doesn’t directly say that he suffered child abuse, through his use of rhythm, metaphor, and themes of his postmodern contemporaries he was able to unveil the harsh realities of his childhood. 