When you love someone with a depth as deep as the love between parent and child, it can be hard to leave or be angry even if they are physically or emotionally harming you. In Theodore Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz,” he portrays an abusive relationship between a father and his daughter. Roethke is showing how the love of a child can be hopeful even in the darkest of times. A little girl always wants to cling to her mother and father, and the beautiful innocence, hopefulness and naivety of this child in “My Papa’s Waltz” keeps her from realizing what exactly her father is doing. A young child knows no other love than that of their mother and father. The waltz, a beautiful dance in which the couple rhythmically turns around and around, becomes a symbol for the way the child continually clings back to her father because his love is the only love she knows.

Roethke continually makes a point of the little girl hanging on to her father no matter what he does. In the first stanza, the child “hung on like death” (Roethke 90) to her father after stating abusive things that he had just done. When the child first states that her father’s breath smells like whiskey, she continues to hang onto him, even though it is not easy. She has a grip on the fact that her relationship with her father is not easy, and not normal. The very last line of the poem portrays how hopeful this little girl is that her father still loves her. After listing off the different way he abused her, Roethke ends the poem with the simple, yet emotional line, “Still clinging to your shirt” (Roethke 91). Not only is she clinging to his shirt, but also to him and the idea that things could change. 

Throughout this poem, the waltz is used to to exemplify how the girl and her father’s relationship repeats itself. The use of the waltz to describe their relationship cycle is Roethke’s biggest repeating theme. This beautiful dance is used to represent the abusive and unhealthy cycle between this abusive father and his naïve daughter. The waltz is generally an easy dance, but in the first stanza, Roethke shows that this waltz, between this father and his child, is certainly not: “Such waltzing was not easy” (Roethke 90). The child is viewing the abuse from her father and their fight as a dance because of the great amount of hope she holds in him. She wanted to act as if they were having fun in the second stanza as Roethke uses the word “romped” which usually signifies playfulness between two children. Readers can tell that these two are not having much fun when Roethke says “My mother’s countenance / Could not unfrown itself” (Roethke 91). This line signifies that the child’s mother was unhappy. She watches her child get abused and maybe is abused as well. The symbol of the deadly waltz continues when the father “beat time on [her] head / With a palm caked hard by dirt,” (Roethke 91). Although one must keep time during a waltz, the way Roethke put it made it seem as if the father is really beating his child, and the child choses not to see it that way. The child in this poem seems to be seeing everything in a more naïve and innocent way than most would, and the symbol of the waltz represents her innocence and optimism about the situation with her father.

The rhyme scheme that Roethke uses adds to the intensity and emotion that is already portrayed by the topic of his poem. Some of the words that he rhymes together are powerful words at the end of powerful phrases that make you stop and think. The poem is also iambic, having a rhyme scheme of ABAB, but instead of it being typical iambic pentameter style, it is written in iambic tri-meter, meaning it only has three stressed syllables per line instead of five. Normally this would be somewhat insignificant, but since this poem is about a waltz, it is significant. Just like the poem has three “beats” (stressed syllables), a waltz is a dance with three beats. So the poem not only is about a waltz, but also is somewhat a waltz in itself. 

Many different feelings are portrayed throughout Roethke’s poem from each individual involved. There is the narrator (the child), the mother and of course, the father. Each of these individuals are feeling something different. The child narrating the poem is feeling hopeful and loving towards her father. She expresses her love for him and hopes that he will show that same love back. The feelings of the father are somewhat unknown. Readers are aware that he has been drinking, as the narrator says from the beginning “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy”(Roethke 90). While the child hopes that her father will love her back, it seems as if he is angry with her because of the physical abuse that is going on. Readers are told that the mother of the child being abused has a facial expression of sadness, so clearly she is feeling grief and sadness. The feelings that Roethke is trying to portray throughout the poem are mostly dark feelings, as violence and broken love are the most prevalent themes.

Just as the child narrating the poem hopefully loves her father despite his abuse towards her, many husbands and wives, mothers and sons, girlfriends and boyfriends feel this same way. Roethke is trying to portray that love does not always feel good. Sometimes love is one sided; one may feel as if they are giving their all to someone who gives them no love in return. The child in this poem is loving her father and hoping with all of her that he will show her love back, but instead he abuses her. This is not only an issue for these two fictional characters in Roethke’s poem, it is a worldwide issue that he is trying to portray in this painful relationship between a father and his child. Love should not hurt, and unfortunately, it does for many mothers, brothers, fathers, daughters and all lovers alike. The heartbreak that many abused individuals feel is portrayed by the child in this poem, except the child continues to stay hopeful and cling onto her father, literally, by his shirt, and figuratively, because she does not want to admit how much he is damaging her. 

This poem is a sad love story. And not a typical one between a man and a woman in love, but to some, an even sadder one. When a child is missing their mother or father’s love, that is the most tragic heartbreak that there is. A child needs their parent’s love to grow and a child deprived of that due to violence is one of the saddest things. Roethke perfectly portrayed violent love and a different type of heartbreak through the waltz of the narrator and her father.
