Theodore Roethke grew up in Michigan helping his father and uncle manage a twenty-five-acre greenhouse and when Roethke was a young teenager he lost both his father and uncle due to cancer and suicide. Even though Roethke struggled with mental illness his childhood experiences became important influences in his writing. While reading “My Papa’s Waltz”, a reader can take a variety of understandings on what is happening throughout the poem, however the most common understanding is that the poem is about an alcoholic father. The literary devices that are used throughout the poem by Roethke are helpful in giving the reader their understandings. His use of imagery, diction, and rhyme scheme all allow the reader to picture and interpret that the poem is about an alcoholic father who is beating on his six to seven-year-old boy. 

Roethke uses many descriptive words throughout the poem that help to paint a picture of a drunken father who is beating on his son. The first phrase that helps to enforce this picture is when Roethke writes, “The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle” (9-10). It helps to clarify the picture of an abusive father because when a man has a battered knuckle it usually means that he has been hitting something. Readers are able to picture a drunken father because the first two lines of the poem reads, “The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy” (1-2). The fact that a young boy could get dizzy from the whiskey on his father’s breath is a strong indicator of how much his father drinks. His father is not just having a few drinks to get him through the day, but having multiple which then causes him to beat his son. Another phrase that Roethke uses is, “My right ear scraped a buckle” (12). We are able to better picture the boy and his injuries from his right ear scraping a buckle. If the boy was older his ear would not be at his father’s buckle. All of the descriptive words and phrases that Roethke’s uses help a reader to better visualize the poem as being about a drunken father beating on his young son. 

The word choice that is used throughout a story plays a large part on a reader’s interpretation and Roethke’s diction helps to enhance the poem. The word choices that he picks allows for certain views from a reader and it also allows us to fill in parts of the story that are not explicitly given to us. When he writes, “But I hung on like death” (3), he could have said, for dear life or another phrase, but his use of the word death gives us a different understanding. The author choosing to use a word like death shows us how the boy was hanging on. The boy was hanging on to his father and did not want to let him go because the boy remembers what his father used to be like before he was an alcoholic. The boy most likely was close with his father, but once he became an alcoholic and started beating on him it caused them to grow apart. Another choice that helped to enhance the poem was when he mentions, “My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself” (8), it shows that the mother was there and knew what was going on but didn’t step in and help the boy. If the mother wasn’t mentioned at all we would have thought that it was just the boy and the father which could give clues to why the father was beating the son. We know that the mother was around and did not do anything to help. Roethke does not tell us what age the boy is but we can figure out that the boy is six to seven years old because it is mentioned that the boys right ear scraped a buckle. The height of the boy’s ear being at the father’s buckle is about the same of an average six to seven-year-old boy. The word choice that is used by Roethke throughout the poem allows the reader to better understand the story while filling in details that were not explicitly stated. 

The rhyme scheme that is used throughout the poem allows us to read it in a certain way that helps bring the reader to the understanding of an alcoholic father beating his son. Roethke uses an abab scheme throughout the entire poem. The scheme allows the reader to read the poem in a smooth way which helps to visualize the father beating on the son in a smooth manner. The rhyme scheme allows for the fighting to be pictured as a dance. We know that the father is in control of the waltz and the boy does not fully understand what is going on. A reader knows that the boy does not fully understand what is going on because at six to seven years old a child could not put together why something what happening they would just know that it is happening. The boy is not able to understand that he was beat by his father until he grows up and is reflecting on his bad memories with his father. 

Roethke was able to use his early life experiences to influence his later poetry including “My Papa’s Waltz”. The use of his personal experiences led to Roethke being called “the greatest poet this country has yet produced” by James Dickey. Throughout the poem a reader is able to make the interpretation that the poem is about an alcoholic father beating on his six to seven-year-old son with Roethke’s use of literary elements. The elements of imagery, diction, and rhyme scheme all allow a reader to be able to support to interpretation of an alcoholic father beating on his son. The descriptive words used by Roethke helps the reader picture a drunken father beating on his son. The word choice allows the reader to interpret the story a certain way while filling in holes to the story that aren’t explicitly given to us and the rhyme scheme used throughout allows the reader to read the poem in a certain way that helps to see the fighting between the father and son as a dance.  
