Many families in America and throughout the entire world are split up or broken apart. A broken household could be a variety of things. Whether the family is struck with divorce, a death in the family, or violence in the household, a difficult life at home is tough on everyone. Unfortunately, a broken family is usually toughest on the children because they are stuck in the house until they can begin their adult lives. Children are extremely fragile and they need their family to support them, encourage them, and help them throughout their childhood. In some of the more extreme cases, parents abuse their children and mistreat them during their childhood. Besides the fact that abusing children is terrible, the children trust the abusive parent or parents and do not know how or when to say stop. They ignore the abusiveness of the parent and keep it to themselves. The long term effects of keeping their experiences to themselves are devastating to many children. This connects directly to the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke. “My Papa’s Waltz” is narrated from a boy’s perspective and it is about a father and a son who are waltzing in the middle of the kitchen. The father drank too much whiskey and was throwing his son around while they were dancing. The father continuously scrapes the boy’s ear with his belt buckle and was keeping time on the top of the boy’s head rather harshly. The poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Roethke uses a dark tone through symbols such as death to convey the helpless feeling children face while being abused by an authority figure.  

Domestic abuse is an underlying message throughout the text. One of the ways Roethke addresses this is through the tone in the poem. The tone of this poem is dark and this is established in the beginning.  For example, death is brought up in lines three and four of the poem, “But I hung on like death, Such waltzing was not easy” (Roethke 3-4). The boy’s father had been drinking and he is swinging his son around hard enough for the boy to have to hang on tightly or “like death”. The phrase “like death” contributes to the overall dark tone of the poem and shows the father’s disregard of his son. Since the boy had to hang onto his father “like death”, the father must be playing a little too rough with his son. This hints that there is a history of abuse or aggressiveness with the father. Instead of this scene being a playful and happy family moment, there is tension between the father and the boy because the boy is being harshly whirled around. Sadly, the father was too drunk to realize his son is uncomfortable. The poem begins with the first two lines, “The whiskey on your breath, Could make a small boy dizzy”. The father being drunk contributes to the dark tone of the poem and leads the reader to believe there could be a habit of abuse in the household. Also the boy could have stopped dancing with his father but he would have been running the risk of disappointing his father or making him angry. Obviously, the boy did not want to upset his father, especially since his father was so drunk. This is clearly some sort of abuse and it shows the boy has been conditioned to go along with anything his father wants him to do. Either the boy can follow his father’s directions, or pay the consequences, whatever those may be. 

As the poem progresses, there are several more signs that there could be a history of abuse in the family. The father becomes more aggressive while dancing with his son and the imagery provided in the poem becomes more vivid. Lines nine through ten provide a dark image, “The hand that held my wrist, Was battered on one knuckle” (9-10). The reader can picture this vivid scene easily. The father is gripping the boy’s wrist tightly and the boy is looking down at the father’s dirty knuckles. The boy refers to his father’s hand as “The hand” and it becomes a symbol of the boy’s fear. The boy saying “The hand” makes it seem like he is scared of his father because of the grip he has on his wrist. This line gives the impression that once the boy’s father becomes physical with him, he begins to be intimidated of his father. Also, the father gripped the boy’s wrist and gripping someone’s wrist is usually a showing of power or strength. Of course, the boy should not be scared of his father even if he grips his wrist but in this family dynamic, that is how it is. The father’s knuckle was said to be battered which also hints at what is going on in the household. The father’s battered knuckle allows the reader to think that the scarred knuckle is from beating the boy. The father’s battered knuckle combined with the grip on the boy’s wrist provide more hints to support the father’s abusive character in this poem. 

The boy’s father was obviously too drunk to notice what he was doing, nor did he seem to care. The father is made out to be careless multiple times throughout the poem. What could have been a sweet family moment filled with love and joy was actually filled with drunkenness and darkness. Lines eleven through twelve exemplify the father’s lack of caring the extremely well, “At every step you missed, My right ear scraped a buckle” (11-12). These lines have a few underlying meanings that show the message that Roethke is trying to get across. First of all, as the father and the son dance, the boy’s ear repeatedly scrapes his father’s belt buckle. The father was completely unaware that he kept scraping his son’s ear. This clearly shows the lack of caring by the father and total disregard for anyone besides himself. The boy’s father was too drunk to notice or care that he was hurting his son. This contributes to the boy’s fear of his father. The belt itself contributes to the dark tone because the belt is historically known as a spanking mechanism. Spanking implies that there is a history of abuse between the father and the boy. Lastly, the boy goes along with the dance even though he is being injured by the sharp belt buckle. This shows that the boy was too afraid to say that his father was hurting him. It was as if the boy was used to things like this with his father and he knew he should not speak up about being hurt. These few lines of the poem show that the boy’s father does not care about his son’s feelings and that there is a history of abuse. 

The dark tone of “My Papa’s Waltz” is shown through the abusive relationship between a father and his son. The poem first introduces the father dancing with his son in a rough manner and the father was too drunk to notice his son was struggling while dancing with him. Dancing is thought to be a happy family moment but in this poem, it is a struggle for the boy. Next, the boy is grasped by his father and the boy shows that he is scared of his father’s strength. Finally, the boy’s ear is constantly scraped by his father’s belt buckle while dancing but his father is too drunk and careless to notice. “My Papa’s Waltz” has a clear message that children are afraid to speak up if they encounter abuse with someone close to them. This is shown by Roethke’s underlying meanings of dark words, tone, and imagery created throughout the text.