
Theodore Roethke’s poem My Papa’s Waltz is a poem about a memory a little boy has with his father. The poem is seen through the eyes of the little boy and how he interpreted the interaction. The boy recalls his father coming home after a night of drinking and the two “waltzing” all night until the boy had to go to bed. This piece of literature is interesting because it can be interpreted in many different ways. Depending on the type of reader, the tone of this poem can be viewed as positive or negative based off how one decides to interpret the meaning of certain of the words. Through Roethke’s dictation and syntax in My Papa’s Waltz he is able to impact the mood of the reader and make the poem seem negative. A negative tone is conveyed through phrases such as whiskey breath, countenance unfrown, and beat my head.  

 The use of syntax and dictation in a story is important because it sets the mood for the reader. Certain words can help persuade a reader to feel a particular way that the author wants them to feel without saying it directly. Roethke’s uses this concept many different times throughout his poem to display the negative view from the little boy. Roethke’s uses the negative connotation of drinking in line 1-2 “The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy.” Being drunk is often seen as negative in society because a lot of people view drinking leading to aggression. Furthermore, child abuse and drinking generally go hand-and-hand together; therefore, the poem makes it seem that the father has come home drunk again and is going to beat his son. This idea of abuse comes in line 3 when he says “But I hung on like death.” The son is trying his hardest to fight off the dad and avoid being beaten, but he isn’t strong enough and ends up just trying to protect himself. Roethke never comes out and directly says that the little boy is being beaten, but he uses certain words that allow for the reader to read between the lines and come up with a conclusion that the father and son have an abusive relationship. 

The negative theme of abuse continues between all 4 stanzas. All the stanzas flow together to tell a different part of the story of abuse from the little boy. The little boy talks about the disappointment he can see from his mom when he says “My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself,” (Roethke, line 7-8). His mother is watching in horror because her son is being harmed, and she cannot do anything to help him but watch. The mother watches as the pans fly across the kitchen because the little boy is hitting into everything and each time she feels worse and worse on the inside. She knows this was never a “waltz” which is why she is so physically distraught with the situation. The mother feels as any mother would feel watching someone harm her kid. No mom likes to see her child being hit, especially by their father, but she feels useless because she knows that she is not strong enough to stop the dad. The mother can see the innocence of the boy being taken away and knows that her son is not old enough to realize what is actually happening to him. 

The little boy displays his innocence of the situation all the way to the very end of the poem. The boy views it as a waltz with his father even till the end when he says on line 15 “Then he waltzed me off to bed.”  The boy never fully understands the truth of the night and that his father was not actually dancing with him. Abuse is displayed in line 13 when the boy says “You beat time on my head,” because when one looks deeper in the line it can be understood that the father was beating his son on his head with the watch on wrist. The son however sees it as the watch hitting him every time he misses steps and does believe that the dad is hitting him on purpose. Later the boy says that his father is hitting him with an open palm hand that is “hard as dirt,” (Roethke, line 15) because he keeps messing up “the waltz”. However, it’s clear that the father is just hitting him out of anger and that there is no reason for the father to hit him. The abuse last till the very end until the little boy finally escapes to his room from his father. “Still clinging to your shirt,” (Roethke, line 16) means the little boy finally fought off his father and stopped him from hitting him and is able to go to bed now. 

Overall, this poem displays the negative effects of alcohol on a family through the eyes of an innocent boy. Roethke uses certain words to develop a negative mood for the poem. The boy in the poem tries his hardest to make this seem positive because he does not want to believe that his father would harm him. Positive words are used in the poem to try and hide the abuse and try to make the reader think about the true meaning. Such as, the poem being called a waltz because it makes it seem more positive because the father and son are just dancing together, but in reality the dance is just the dad hurting the son repeatedly. Innocence will not be able to protect the boy forever and eventually the lie of the waltz will change into the truth of abuse which will result in the boy understanding his childhood and alcohol tearing the family apart. 

