Broken households are a common theme throughout the world.  Substance abuse, divorce, deaths, etc. all contribute to a tougher household environment for everyone.  My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke, depicts a broken household ridden with alcohol abuse.  I have personally encountered alcoholism in my family, that has made life tougher for all of us.  Typically, these types of households are toughest on the children.  Children witness physical abuse to other family members, or actually experience it themselves in broken households.   In Roethke’s poem, he describes his personal encountering with his father, and alcohol abuse.  He puts it into first person and shows the situation from the eyes of the child. A great example of how this abuse affects the whole family is in the second stanza of the poem, when Roethke describes how his mother looked on with sheer disappointment.  However, his mother does not step in to stop the situation.  She is clearly afraid of his father as well.  Roethke uses tone in order to display this abuse in an elegant format.  He uses many different indicators to show that this isn’t just a typical dance with his father. Showing that the relation with his father was meaningful to him, but also rough. The child believed that this abuse was a waltz because his innocence saw it as such. The father-son relationship shown in My Papa’s Waltz is abusive, yet graceful.  

During the main character’s childhood, he experiences the horror of substance abuse in his family.  There are many signals in his poem that show that his father was a victim of alcoholism.  This alcohol abuse is developed very early in the poem, the first two lines of the poem show the true extent of his alcoholism as they state, “The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy;” (Roethke 90). In order to make the child physically dizzy, the father would have had to consume an excessive amount of whiskey.  This is clearly showing how his father is under the influence at the moment. This whole experience that Roethke had encountered was because of alcoholism.  A few stanzas later, he describes some of his father’s physical features, which show how his father’s alcoholism could be related to work related issues, “The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle.” (Roethke 91). and, “You beat time on my head with a palm caked by dirt” (Roethke 91).  Roethke uses these two statements to show how his father could possibly have a physically tolling occupation which could be the reason for the alcohol abuse.

Substance abuse is an underlying theme throughout the poem.  Roethke uses different indicators in order to relay this message to the reader. There are many negative words in the poem that show that this isn’t your typical dance.  A major indicator is in the third line, “But I hung on like death: such waltzing was not easy.” (Roethke 90). The use of the word “death” is showing how hard he was attempting to not get thrown around.  Typically, when something is related to death, it is put into a very negative connotation.  Roethke was basically explaining that he was holding on for his life, while his father was acting carelessly, and not paying attention to the safety of his child.  Roethke uses this to create a sense of elegance in the poem.  Instead of outright calling it abuse, he makes it seem that this is a dance, and he is waltzing with his father, and trying to hold on to keep dancing. To further extend the dark, yet elegant tone in the poem, Roethke uses words like, “death”.

Roethke uses numerous words in order to develop his tone in the poem. Another word that Roethke uses is, “romped”, he states, “We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf;” (Roethke 91).  In this situation, romped is a negative word, describing kind of a not too aggressive fight.  Instead of outright stating that his father was hitting him, he uses “romped”.  This word is used to continue the theme of the sort of elegance the poem is trying to show on the surface.  At the end of the poem, he says, “Then waltzed me off to bed still clinging to your shirt.” (Roethke 91).  This explains how the situation took a toll on Roethke, the fact that he was still clinging to his shirt by the end of the entire experience, shows how scared and worried for his life he was.   Roethke uses several words that gives a possible regular dance, a negative aura.

There are also some statements in Roethke’s work that definitely show that there is physical abuse happening.  He states, “At every step you missed, my right ear scraped a buckle.” (Roethke 91).  This is showing how the child could have been continually hurt by his father’s lack of concern. His ear could constantly be getting scraped by his father’s belt without his father noticing.  This could also be seen as very innocent, every time the child and his father miss a step, his ear could slide by and just hit the side of his father’s belt, not in an harming manner. Thus keeping the elegant theme Roethke is attempting to create.  A few lines later, Roethke states that his father “..beat time on his head” (Roethke 91).  Clearly an example of abuse, Roethke explains how his father hit him.  Yet this still could be interpreted in an elegant form.  He could have been keeping the beat of the song on the top of Roethke’s head, not actually hitting him.  Roethke does a beautiful job of keeping an underlying theme while still relaying the clear abuse he had to experience as a child.  

My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke finds a way to take a nice father and son dance and turn it into an abusive, and negative situation. On the surface, this poem is seemingly a typical father son dance, however, once tone is taken into consideration, the poem develops a much deeper and abusive connotation. Roethke does this in order to show how this young boy looks up to his father, and is so innocent that he thinks his father could do no wrong. In reality however, his father wasn’t the great man the young boy believed him to be. Roethke uses numerous examples that can be interpreted as an actual dance to describe how his childhood abuse occurred. The reader is able to see quickly that this isn’t your typical dance however.   Roethke had a clear broken household, that showed how one person could hurt a whole family so easily.  The poem has a clear message of abuse that is shown through underlying words, and dark imagery in the text. 
