The way young children think is a beautiful thing. Their optimism towards everything is something most people lose as they age and become jaded to the realities of the world. My Papa's Waltz is from the perspective of a young boy who looks up to his very hard working father. The young boy details in the poem how his father would swing him around the kitchen, like a dance. In My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke, the boy recounts the abuse he faced from the father he loves as a dance through diction and imagery.

The first stanza contains several examples of diction that show the negative side of the boy's beloved father. The father is a drunk. The boy comments that the smell of alcohol on his breath was so strong it "could make a small boy dizzy." The father is heavily intoxicated in front of his young child who loves and idolizes him. The boy wants to be with his dad, but his dad is an abuser. He hangs on him "like death." The phrase, like death, evokes so much pain and suffering. Comparing hanging on like death to hanging on for dear life, puts it into a very different light that reveals the author's purpose in the poem.

In the second stanza, the imagery is far more prevalent and descriptive. The boy paints a picture of his surroundings while he and his father do their dance. The boy talks about the pans '[sliding] from the kitchen shelf," as they were going around the room. And he describes his mother's expression not being able to "unfrown itself." Both of these lines immediately create a scene in readers' minds of the kitchen where they are doing their dance.

The third stanza alternates back to the diction similar to that of the first stanza. The boy describes his father's rough hands and the "battered... knuckle," that held his wrist. He talks about his father missing steps, causing the boy's "right ear [to scrape] a buckle." The use of the word battered is very powerful in this stanza because it emphasizes the father's strength and power over his helpless son. Talking about the boy's ear scraping a buckle is both simple and graphic at the same time. The phrase is both ambiguous and very explanatory at the same time. This stanza is very telling to the abuse the boy is facing in this poem.

The fourth stanza reverts back again to the use of imagery in the words. The boy describes time being beaten "on [his] head," from his father's weathered hand. And being waltzed off to bed, "clinging to [his] shirt." This stanza is what contains the most power and emotion of all four stanzas. A reader can picture a "palm caked by dirt," beating a child over the head in a kitchen with pans on the floor. And they can picture a young boy clinging to his fathers shirt, just wanting to go to bed after being abused.

The boy loves his father dearly and participates in this waltz of his father over powering and abusing him. But being the young child he is, he sees it not as abuse but as this dance he describes.
