The relationship between the son and the Papa in Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” is an abusive relationship that at the same time is also a loving one. Reading this poem without doing any close reading, it is easy to just see a father whose has had a couple drinks come home and dance with his son after a long day of work and then puts him in bed. However, dig a bit deeper, and we find an abusive father who has been drinking whiskey coming home yet again to abuse his son while the mother lets him. Focus in a little bit more, and you can see the love the son still has for his father even in the face of the abuse. Their relationship is not normal as you can see. Roethke’s use of words like “hung” and “death:” (line 3), give us just enough evidence to peak into the true reality of this complex relationship between father and son. Words like “romped” (5), and “battered” (10), exhibit just how physical this father is with his son when he is off the liquor. Yet and still Roethke in the last few lines of the poem gives us enough to interpret that the son still has love for his father, “Then waltzed me off to bed / Still clinging to your shirt.” (15-16), and is even still holding on to him. 

In the first stanza, the son’s choice of words:

          The whiskey on your breath

          Could make a small boy dizzy;

          But I hung on like death:

          Such waltzing was not easy (1-4) 

gives the reader insight into the father and son’s relationship. When he says, “The whiskey on your breath” (1), it can be interpreted that the father has been drinking. The fact that the son can identify the liquor as whiskey shows that he is familiar with the smell. This indicates that the father probably drinks whiskey often or at least enough to where his son can now identify the liquor by the smell of it on his father’s breath. One thing that is very common in abusive parental relationships is the consumption of alcohol, and it seems as if this “Papa” has had too much. When the speaker says “Could make a small boy dizzy; / But I hung on like death:” (2-3), he gives an illustration to the reader of just how much alcohol the father had consumed because it is making the boy dizzy just from the smell of his father’s breath. Interestingly he hangs “…on like death” (3). Hanging on like death seems to be a very strong choice of words because death essentially will never let go. Thus showing that the son will never let go of his father no matter what he puts him through. The final line of the stanza, “Such waltzing was not easy” (4), is complexing because it says that waltzing was not easy. Well a waltz can sometimes be defined as an activity that was easy kind of like a cake walk. Here we have the speaker saying something he is doing is supposed to be easy, but in fact it is not quite as easy as it should be. Loving your father, for most people, is something that comes pretty easy to them but in this case the son does not find this task to be so easy because his abusive father is drunk and abusing him once again. 

The boy describing how he and his father “… romped until the pans / slid from the kitchen shelf;” (5-6), gives a very descriptive visualization of the two sort of romping around the kitchen. The use of the word romped has multiple meanings. One is to play roughly and energetically and the other is to proceed without effort to achieve something. The first thought that came to mind when seeing the word romped however, was that the father was actually beating on his son in the kitchen. When looking up just exactly who Theodore Roethke was, I found that James Dickey (who was US poet Laureate at back in 1963) said that Roethke possessed a “deep, gut vitality.” His “deep, gut vitality” characteristic could also be used as evidence to display just how abusive the father is to his son. 

Even through all the abuse it seems in the last couple lines of the poem that the son still loves his father. When the son says:

          You beat time on my head

          With a palm caked hard by dirt,

          Then waltzed me off to bed

          Still clinging to your shirt. (13-16)

He still is getting abused, “You beat time on my head” (13), but then shows that he stills cares for his father by “Still clinging to your shirt” (16), just like he “… hung on like death:” in line (3). It can be seen that the father loves his son too when the boy is “waltzed… off to bed” (15), by his father. 

This father, son relationship is as complex as it gets and is completely like no other because you have a father who is abusing his son, yet his son still loves him like any normal son would love their father. On the surface the meaning of this poem can be interpreted to be a son’s memory of his loving dad coming home and dancing with him before he goes to bed. Delve in more extensively and it’s clear that in Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, there is an underlying story about an abusive, drunken father and his son that still clings to his shirt and loves him even after getting beat on his head. 
