My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke - Essay Example

If we consider waltz as a metaphor for relationship between his father and him, we can feel that the son is saying that he is having a hard relationship with his father. We find out that the waltz is actually a romp because it is causing dishes to slide off the shelves, but still the son is not feeling easy with it. Dad makes mess in the kitchen, and Mom is also not very pleased with him. The son says that Dad scratches him over his head time and again. This can be a symbol of Dad’s blunders that he makes in his life, which are affecting the son in manifold ways that he cannot even describe, except saying that he feels uneasy.

It is also the son’s bedtime, and Dad is shown waltzing him off to bed. This shows father’s love for his son, which he shows with the use of power, and the son is still clinging on his father’s shirt, not wanting to let go of him. The whole imagination affects the son’s life in a way that he feels the need for existence of his father, and his support; yet, he sometimes feels uncomfortable when his father messes things up in life. Also, Dad’s belt buckle and the brushing off of his son against it, depicts a kind of violence and the use of power from Dad’s side, which makes the son too frightened to express his feelings to his Dad.

"Digging" by Seamus Heaney Character: The son (poet) This poem is also a depiction of relationship between a father and a son. The poet, one of the main characters, shows himself sitting at his writing table, watching his father outside who is digging the flower bed. There is a pane of glass that is separating him from his father. This pane of glass is a source of isolation for the poet. Heaney gets affected from this idea of isolation or separation in his life, which he also portrays in much of his poetry.

The poet’s grandfather, in the poem, would dig turf; his father would dig potatoes; and, the poet himself is digging old memories of his father. He compares his pen to his father’s spade. His imagination has affected him in a way that he feels closer to his family history; yet, there is a kind of barrier between his father and him, which seems to be thin as a pane of glass, but too thick to be broken at the same time. He talks about his pen as if he is determined to break his family history of digging, and to be more sophisticated than his father and his grandfather were in their times, by becoming a poet.

"Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas Character: The son (Thomas Dylan) This poem by Dylan Thomas reflects his deep relationship with his aging father. Thomas’s relationship with his father is of particular interest in understanding his style of writing. ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’, is a villanelle he wrote in 1945 for his father, D.J. Thomas, who was struggling with cancer. It was a 19-line poem and consisted of five tercets and a quatrain on two rhymes. The first and third lines of the first tercet recurred alternately as a catchphrase finishing the subsequent stanzas, and connected as the last couplet of the quatrain.

In this poem, Thomas addressed his own father as he moved toward sightlessness and death. The relationship showed Thomas's philosophical imagination about his father's adamant intellectual autonomy, which was now under control of poor health. Having emotionally moved and agitated, Thomas made himself show his emotions and respect in the intricate structure of the villanelle. He talked about wild men, good men, and grave men in this poem, and how death approached them. As in many other poems, Thomas has imagined how life goes to an end, approached by death.

This kind of imagination affected Thomas’