The Circle of Memory in My Papas Waltz - Essay Example

? of the The Circle of Memory in “My Papa's Waltz” Roethke's poem “My Papa's Waltz” is an ambiguous, ambivalent and intricate poem that raises an issue with opposing views and arguments. The use of waltz by the author in this poem is purposely used to complicate the relationship between the son and his father. The waltz is commonly known to be a dance where participants share space and time to enjoy themselves, have fun and bond. However, while the speaker is dancing waltz with his father, some negative descriptions that tend to imply alcoholism and child abuse start to emerge. Readers now begin to wonder, does the waltz dance ignites a painful memory for the speaker or happy memory? Does the waltz dance bring out the father’s clumsiness and a moment of fun with the speaker, or does it bring out issues of alcoholism and child abuse? Therefore, waltz becomes the center of the themes that it portrays while at the same time, becoming the center of controversy. One way, that depicts the use of waltz to complicate the father-son relationship, is through the argument that the speaker remembers his father's bouts of drunken behavior and how they affected him as a child. Another side of argument views that the waltz depicts the love between the father and son, since the former, despite his heavy drinking after a day’s hard work, got time to spend and dance with his son. However, in the first argument, the speaker remembers how his father slapped him around due to his inebriated state, also, that he became violent after drinking too much. Memory plays a vital role in the poem as the speaker is a grown man who remembers his childhood experiences. The subjective lens of memory reveals that the speaker perceives his father's “waltz” differently now than he did as a child. The speaker also expresses how he felt confused by his father's behavior as a child. As a child, the speaker views his father's violence as actually being a display of emotion and affection. He explains how his childhood perception of his father allowed him to confuse his father's violence with dancing. The waltz symbolizes how the speaker views his father's behavior differently as an adult as he acknowledges how his father had a strange, troubling way of expressing his love and affection. The circle of memory is inseparable from the speaker's view of the waltz as a strange, tenuous bond he had with his father. This represents confusion, not only to the reader, but also to the speaker. Since the poem is a memory of when he was young, the waltz seems to represent something different from when the speaker was young. As stated earlier, the use of waltz in the poem is purposely used to complicate the relationship between the father and the speaker. This also implies that the speaker is also confused by the meaning of the dance. His view about the dance then seems to have changed now that he is fully grown. However still, confusion lingers on his memories. The waltz reveals that the speaker's memory of his father changes over time, and hence that the “beat” of his father's fist is part of the beat of the speaker's memory. The father's movements reveal that he is intoxicated as he is moving around the room aimlessly. Similarly, the speaker's memory wanders in aimless circles in his attempt to decipher the full meaning of his father's behavior. The speaker's endeavor to find certainty regarding his father's waltz reveals his desire for objectivity. The following lines reveal that he desires to be as objective about his view of his father in the same way that death is objective about life: “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy” (Roethke & Snodgrass 1-4). The speaker realizes that finding objectivity is an arduous task as his father's ambiguous display of emotion leaves him confused. He comes to terms with how his perception of his father lacks the necessary objectivity of factual truth. The poem illustrates that memory wanders aimlessly in circles as it plays with the idea of objectivity rather than the reality of objectivity. Roethke demonstrates that the speaker struggles to rise above his confusion as his memory moves as freely and carelessly as his father's waltz. The young speaker is led and guided by his subjective perception of his father’s behavior and feelings towards him. The older speaker now tries to be objective wondering whether his younger self was blinded by his affection towards his father. The waltz is a complicated form of dance for young individuals. The bruises that the speaker talked about, obtained from his father’s buckle during the waltz demonstrates that he was young at that time as well as inexperienced at waltz. The intricacy of the dance presents difficulty in understanding for the young and older speaker. Likewise, the dance has a confusing impact on the speakers mind with regards to the father’s affection. The conflict here is that if the father was violent and uncaring towards the speaker then how the speaker did understood the main essence of this form of dance? Was it necessary for the father to go all the way to mask the violence with the dance? On the contrary, if the father was loving and affectionate, why wasn’t he caring enough to dance with the speaker in a sober manner in order to avoid hurting him in the process? The essence of the dance and the father’s behavior while waltzing portrays a confusing relationship between the two. Both the speaker and reader try to decipher this meaning with little or no success. The circular movements of his father's waltz reveal how the speaker accepts one's view of the past is never static. One's perception of the past constantly evolves along with one's perception of the present. The speaker is well-acquainted with the process of remembering, but he fails to fully discern the pattern of his father's behavior. All he is left with is a fragmented picture of the past, and therefore the speaker reconstructs the past. In the following lines, the speaker observes how his mother's expression remains the same, which suggests that the speaker himself is unable to find new meanings behind his father's behavior: “We romped until the pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf; my mother's countenance / could not unfrown itself” (Roethke & Snodgrass 5-8). The waltz allows the speaker and his father to collide with various objects in the kitchen. These objects reveal that attempting to decipher the past creates a circle in which one realizes that memory is full of obstacles. The waltz that his father performs creates a mess; similarly the speaker produces disarray through his insistent search for meaning. Memory reveals that nothing about the past is stable as one's view of it alters throughout the process of self-discovery and introspection. The re-introspective process of examining the past reveals that trying to make sense of the past only emphasizes the futility of fully grasping it. The subjectivity of memory illustrates that the speaker fails to grasp the reality of being a child. It reveals that the concept of fatherly love was alien to him as a child, hence, this concept remains nebulous even in his adult years. The speaker attempts to define fatherly love in the context of the waltz, which only reveals that although his father may have loved him he remains uncertain. The father's inability to clearly express his love parallels the speaker's inability to perceive his father's love through his memory. The speaker's memory moves around in a circle in the same way that the waltz involves two people moving around in a circle. Like the dance, the beat of memory changes over time and thereby causes the speaker to view his father differently. As a child, the speaker views his father's drunken movements as expressions of love. The speaker acknowledges that he was confused about his father's behavior as a child. The father's drunken state symbolizes how the speaker was confused about his father as a child. The following lines reveal that the circular motion of memory allows the speaker to see how his relationship with his father involved a mixture of love and violence: “The hand that held my wrist / Was battered on one knuckle; at every step you missed / My right ear scraped my buckle” (9-12). The waltz embodies the circular nature of the speaker's memory, which allows him to revisit the past in order to better understand it. The speaker views the waltz as revealing a strange rhythm. This rhythm is part of his memory of his father; nevertheless, he realizes that he views his father in conflicting terms. As Bachelor and Master argues, the speaker remembers how he had to endure his father's drunkenness, and as an adult he accepts the fact that he has to endure his father’s memory: “The tone of the poem is half affectionate and half sardonic. The speaker’s father is a habitual drunkard. He comes home in drunken state. Though the whiskey smell is unbearable to the child, he sticks to his father as a matter of protest which is never pronounced but endured” (Bachelor and Master 1). The speaker is defiant in his attempt to cling to his memory of his father and derive meaning from it. He attempts to defy time and memory in the same way that he defies his father as a child. As a child, he sticks closely to his father in order to oppose his father's drunkenness, which is similar to how the speaker desires to overcome his confusion about his father. The poem illustrates that the speaker has to endure his uncertainty regarding his father, and his attempt to make sense of the past parallels his act of clinging to his father's shirt as a child. The speaker clings to the memory in the hope of understanding it, but he remains as helpless as when his father slapped him around. He is as confused about the memory of his father as he was about his father's display of emotion when he was a child. The poem reveals that the father attempts to bond with his son through the dance but ends up alienating him. The waltz is based on the joined circular movements of two people, but the speaker recognizes that he feels distant from his father. The closest he gets to his father, the more hurt he feels. Whether this is physical or emotional, it constitutes to the speakers confusion. It reveals that although the speaker desires to view his father in favorable terms, the reality of the waltz reveals friction and disarray. It only emphasizes the distance between him and his father rather than the unity of rhythms that the dance is based on. The speaker's memory tries to move in a circle and make sense of his father's behavior, but it ultimately reveals that the speaker fails to fully make sense of his relationship with his father. At the end, the speaker realizes that the waltz is all that he has left of his father, hence, the speaker stubbornly clings to that memory: “You beat time on my head / With a palm caked hard by dirt, / Then waltzed me off to bed / Clinging to your shirt” (13-16). The speaker realizes that the past is nearly impossible to make sense of. His memory tries to move like a waltz, but the past and present fail to flow together in the same way as he and his father fail to bond. Past interpretations of his father’s behavior differ from present interpretations of his father’s behavior. What in the past could be considered as love and affection is now interpreted as violence. The speaker tries to reconcile these differences but to no avail. He attempts to view and perceive the memory differently from how he perceived while still young. This implies that there are many things that have happened between them. There are a lot of things that have changed in the way people behave while waltzing between the past and present. The aimless circle in which memory moves illustrates that one must struggle with the futile attempt to find meaning where there is none. The waltz his father performs symbolizes how memory casts two different lights. The speaker is forced to perceive his memory through a narrow, dim light that is inseparable from the distant nature of the past. He realizes that although he is in a position to look back at the past, he remains as distant from it as before. The poem illustrates that the circle of memory moves around a space that is as small and limited as a kitchen. The fact that the father performs the waltz in such a small space implies that he and the speaker are bound to collide with objects. The speaker realizes that he encounters obstacles in his pursuit of meaning, and that his view of his father remains as uncertain and ambiguous as before. Memory merely points the way to its own limitations, nonetheless, it moves in a circle only to emphasize that one must constantly revisit the past without ever truly leaving in some regards. The speaker desires to articulate his resistance of his father's behavior, but he realizes that he must accept it for what it appeared. This demonstrates that the speaker, even though grown up, has better understanding of social issues, and this makes him accept the meaning of his father’s behavior both in literal and practical meanings. He remembers how his mother frowned upon his father's irresponsible behavior, and that it made no real difference whether his father's waltz was a display of love or violence: “He never pronounces any work for the problem. He just endures as it seems to have been being endured by his mother for a long time. The mother’s mood is angry and depressed. Despite the husband’s drunkenness she is doing her regular household work” (Bachelor & Master 1). The ambiguous nature of his father's behavior parallels the speaker's dual perception of his father, whom he views as being both violent and affectionate. In addition, the emotion state of his mother confuses the speaker as to the meaning behind the dance. She is not shocked, nor is she afraid. If this was the case, it would have directly implied that violence took place during the dance. On the other hand, she does not display happiness or excitement. This seems to imply that the dance may not have been violent but rather reckless. This reckless behavior of the speaker’s father confuses the speaker as to whether it displayed violence or affection. Mckenna (1) contends that the ambiguity of the poem is based on the speaker's struggle to balance the violence and love that his father expressed in the waltz. The poem can be viewed as involving a father's violence as well as love as the ambiguity. It is part of how the speaker remains oblivious to the true meaning of his father's behavior despite his effort to grasp it: “Evidence from the original, handwritten manuscripts adds support for allowing and validating contradictory interpretations of this poem. The holograph manuscripts of "My Papa's Waltz" confirm that Roethke himself tried to balance the negative and positive tones of the poem, resulting in its rich ambiguity” (Mckenna 1). The speaker as well as the reader wonders whether the behavior exhibited during the dance was intended violence, or just clumsiness of the father in the attempt to show love and affection to the speaker. The poem reveals that violence and love are forever a part of the speaker's view of his father. The poem reveals that the speaker's view of his father's waltz reveals how memory is both subjective and limited. The waltz symbolizes how the speaker attempts to reconcile past and present by generating a sense of being united with his father. The poem illustrates that the speaker's memory fails to make him grasp his father's behavior, and that as a result he can only cling to that memory. It illustrates that memory moves around in a circle, but that this circle remains incomplete due to how the past and present remain separate. The past represents different things than the present. Sometimes we try to find meaning to things whose context we have forgotten like the speaker. Roethke demonstrates that one's yearning to find objectivity in the limited space of subjectivity will only find disappointment. The poem reveals that nothing about the past is absolutely certain as memory moves in a circle that is, forever, aimless. Works Cited Roethke, Theodore & Snodgrass D. W William. My Papa's Waltz, Kansas: Bluestem Press, College of Saint Benedict, 2001. Bachelor and Master, “My Papa’s Waltz: Theodore Roethke,” Summary and Critical Analysis, Web. Retrieved from http://www.bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/my-papas-waltz.html Mckenna J. John, “Roethke’s Revisions and the Tone of My Papa's Waltz," ANQ Spring Magazine, 1998, Vol. 11, Issue 2. p34. http://www.mrbauld.com/exrthkwtz.html Read More