The most powerful and universal emotion in human existence is love.  People experience love around the world every day in unique ways; love of nature, love of oneself, love of others, etc.  Although love is a very strong emotion with a generally positive social connotation, it coexists with one of the world’s most feared emotions: fear itself.  In order to love someone or something, people constantly live in fear of being betrayed by or losing what they love.  This can be exemplified in a simple and delicate scenario. Rumor spreads that my favorite restaurant is not doing well financially.  Fear of never again being able to chow down on the beloved shrimp and grits that bring back memories of my childhood hometown haunts me until judgement day finally arrives.  Considering the love I have for a place to eat is not the same as that of love for a significant other, I still feel an emotional withdrawal as I excitedly arrive to consume my favorite dish only to discover locked doors and an empty building.  These emotional tolls can be experienced in a far grander form when loved ones stab you in the back or are lost completely.  In the case of the young boy in Theodore Roethke’s, “My Papa’s Waltz,” this character struggled with a constant battle of fear versus love with his father.

The poem begins by depicting the young boy’s father as a drunken man.  This preliminary detail hints that his father was vulnerable to being an abusive man.  The narrator describes how his father’s “breath Could make a small boy dizzy” (Roethke lines 1-2) from the large quantity of alcohol he consumed.  It is typically frowned upon to be excessively drunken in the presence of young children which is evident in the first stanza.  Parents whom frequently drink excessively around their children often turn out to be abusive and negligent.  This first hint of abusiveness leads the audience to discover the first example of fear vs. love.  A young child has all the reason to fear a father who returns from work only to drink his hardships away.

In order to fully understand what the narrator means by the title of his poem, one must first understand the definition of what it means to waltz.  To waltz means to move or dance in a particularly perpetual step or rhythm.  The narrator uses the word waltz to compare a smooth, rhythmic dance to his routine battle with his father.  The line “But I hung on like death” (Roethke line 3) first depicts the love the young boy has for his father.  Although the child was fearful of his father, he clung on to him as opposed to cowering and running away.  This suggests that although the father in the poem was abusive, the child still found it in his heart to love his dad and seek security by clinging onto him.  Although the word waltz is used to describe the battle between the father and son, the young boy’s scenario does not exemplify a typical waltz.  “Such waltzing was not easy” (Roethke line 4) is employed to further portray the struggle.  The narrator indicates that maintaining a relationship with his abusive father is not easy.  In the second and third stanzas, the narrator uses specific diction to express the violent acts of his father.  “We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf” (Roethke lines 5-6) presents a tussle occurring between the boy and his father.  Romping is a word used to describe ungraceful stumbling and staggering indicating that the motions of the child’s father are drunken and careless.  The narrator presents the audience with a setting in this line: the kitchen.  Kitchens are typically places where families gather to engage in conversation and to receive nourishment.  In the child’s case, his kitchen is a room where he is receiving unnecessary punishment and neglect from his father.  Stumbling around the kitchen, the narrator describes his father’s hand as “The hand that held (his) wrist” (Roethke line 9).  Rather than holding the boy’s hand, his father is forcefully holding his wrist.  The holding of a wrist signifies the forceful disabling of one’s hand.  For example, handcuffs are placed on criminal’s wrists in order to disable the use of their hands entirely.  Similar to handcuffs, the narrator’s father’s hand puts arrest to any free movement of the child.  This is yet another example of the abusive actions being used towards the defenseless and innocent child who fears his father.  

The last example of abusive behavior can be viewed in the fourth and final stanza of the poem.  The young boy’s father “beat time on (his) head” (Roethke line 13) as if it were a casual thing to do.  This quote suggests that the narrator’s father beat on his head as a pastime.  Another explanation of this quote could be that the boy’s father is physically beating time off of his life by causing permanent damage.  Either way this quote is viewed, it gives the child yet another reason to live in fear as his father persists with violent behavior.  The routine struggle is finalized when the narrator is “waltzed… off to bed” (Roethke line 15).  This quote hints that the juvenile boy is not only being physically abused but sexually abused as well.    

Although the young boy fears his father for his abusive and negligent behavior, he still finds it in him to express love towards his father.  The narrator uses repetition to punctuate his love as displayed in the following phrase; “Still clinging to your shirt” (Roethke line 16).  In the beginning of the poem, the narrator uses the same phrase to describe how he loves his father.  After all the abusive behavior exemplified in the poem, the child still has the irresistible urge to cling to his father in order to experience love.  Because love is the most powerful emotion in the world, it takes an extremely negative experience or series of events to stop loving someone or something that has been a part of one’s life for so long.  As portrayed by the young child in this poem, the love for his father persisted through one of the most difficult childhood scenarios one could face.
