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. Roethke struggled with mental illnesses throughout his childhood and used those experiences to influence 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 are helpful in giving the reader their understandings. Roethke’s use of imagery, diction, and rhyme scheme all allow the reader to interpret and analyze that the poem is about an alcoholic father who is beating 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 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. When readers see “battered on one knuckle” it puts the image into their minds because the author could have said a generic term, like bruised knuckles, but by including the word battered it gives a better idea on how the knuckles look. Readers can picture a drunken father because the first two lines of the poem read, “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. He is not just having a few drinks to get him through the day, but having multiple which then causes him to beat his son. Readers can understand how violent of a fight is going on from when Roethke writes, “We romped until the pans/Slid from the kitchen shelf” (5-6). Readers can understand that the father and the boy are moving around so much that they are knocking off all the pans in the kitchen. They can fully picture how much is going onto between the father and the boy because if they were not fighting they wouldn’t be knocking the pans off the kitchen shelf. All the descriptive words and phrases that Roethke’s uses help a reader to better visualize the poem as being about a drunken father beating his young son. 

The diction that is used by Roethke throughout the poem plays a large role on a reader’s interpretation. The word choices that he makes allows for certain views from a reader and it also allows them to fill in parts of the story that are not explicitly given. When Roethke 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 readers a negative understanding. The author choosing to use a word like death shows readers how hard the boy was hanging on. He was hanging on to his father and did not want to let him go. The boy may remember what his father was like before he started drinking and thus never wants to let go of that image of his father. Even though his father is beating him, readers can understand that the boy still has hope for the father as he hangs onto him like death. Another time diction helped to enhance the poem was when Roethke mentions, “My mother’s countenance/Could not unfrown itself” (8). This quote shows that the mother was present and knew what was going on, but did not step in and help the boy. If the mother wasn’t mentioned at all, readers would have thought that it was just the boy and the father which could give clues to why the father was beating the son. Readers know that the mother was around and did not do anything to help. Roethke does not tell readers what age the boy is but they can figure it out because he said, “My right ear scraped a buckle” (12). Readers can better picture the boy because the father’s belt buckle is about the same height of an average six to seven-year-old boy. If the author did not include this clue to the height of the boy, readers would not be able to figure out how old he was. 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 readers to read it in a certain way that helps bring them to the understanding of an alcoholic father beating his son. Roethke uses an “a b a b” scheme throughout the entire poem which allows the reader to read the poem in a smooth way. With the way the lines are written, the poem takes after a typical waltz tempo and in itself becomes a dance. Readers can read the poem in the rhyme scheme and interpret the fighting and picture it as a dance. They know that the father is in control of the waltz and the boy does not fully understand what is going on due to his young age. The boy is not able to understand the pain his father is causing him until he is older and reflecting on his childhood. The rhyme scheme plays an important role in the way that the reader reads the poem. 

Roethke used 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 can make the interpretation that the poem is about an alcoholic father beating on his six to seven-year-old son with the help of Roethke’s use of literary elements. The elements of imagery, diction, and rhyme scheme all allow a reader to be able to support the 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 them 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 waltz.  
