




Theodore Roethke’s, My papa’s waltz, was written in way that could be taken either in a positive or negative context. There is a lack of details to really decide what is happening in the poem. However reading deeper into the poem and not focusing on the negative word choices, there is a more peaceful meaning behind this piece. 

The way Roethke tells the story makes it hard to tell what is actually going on so it up to the reader to use their own personal experience and takes on life to decide how to interpret it. It isn’t a straight forward poem, you really must think deep on what Roethke wants you to feel. Reading deep into the poem, it isn’t the negative connotation that is initially implied. There are a lot of darker words in this poem that could make the reader think differently. Roethke uses words like “death, frown, beat, etc.”. These are meant to show that there is a darkness about this poem. Not everything was okay and happy but the peaceful resolution comes from the connection of the child and father. The child always seemed to stay with the father as he went through his own troubles. In the first stanza, the father is drunk but in the third line the author says “But I hung on like death” (Roethke LL.3). Death is permanent. Once it happens there isn’t any changing the fact and that’s how dramatic Roethke wanted to make that line. Whatever was going on in their life he would still cling to his father. He used the word death to describe the way he held on to his father because his father had already passed when he wrote this.

Life doesn’t have to be going well to still have that connection with your family. The family in this poem obviously had their dark times but this wasn’t a dark memory. This was a positive reflection of the authors past. “You beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt” (Roethke LL.16) tells that the father was a hardworking man that his hands were still covered in dirt as he was getting ready to take his son to bed. The author is doing something unique that could go unmissed. He isn’t implying that the father is drunkenly beating his son with dirty hands. He uses these characteristics of the father to show his struggles and the tough life that he lived. Life isn’t always clear and simple so it makes sense that Roethke would write this poem in a way that could be taken either in a positive way or a negative. But at the beginning and end of the poem, he is always holding on to the father in some way which shows that he doesn’t hate his father. It all comes down to the fact that there are going to be difficult times in life, but things aren’t always as they seem.

In the background information of my Papa’s Waltz, it tells of how Roethke grew up working for his father and his uncle and that they both died when he was just a teenager in very traumatic ways. When writing this poem, he must have thought back on the kind of man that his father was and that he still had a lot of love for his father. After each description of his father in the poem he always ended with him holding on to him in some way. That’s him holding on to the memory of his father. This poem is written from a memory from Roethke’s early childhood. It shows his innocence in the whole waltz. He still is being taken care of and taught by his father and that how he remembers him. 

The overall theme of this poem is love. Love through the hard times and personal struggles and love for the past. Roethke writes this poem in a dark tone, but it refers to the little happy times when he could hold on to the memories of his father. He’s sad and troubled that he is gone now but also smiles back on the memory of his papa’s waltz 


