My Papas Waltz by Theodore Roethke - Book Report/Review Example

My Papa's Waltz - Theodore Roethke My Papa's Waltz is one of contemporary poetry's most provocative poems. The poem describes a small episode betweena father and his child; where a father comes home at the end of the day and dances with his young son before he puts the child to bed. The poem reflects the poet's relationship with his father and describes the ambivalence of his feelings for his father. To understand this poem completely, we need to look at the life of the poet. Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan. His father was the owner of a greenhouse business, and his family was a typically hard working one. However, when Roethke was fourteen, events took place which had a marked effect on his psyche. A disagreement between his father and his older brother led to the sale of the family business and the suicide of his brother. Not long after, his father succumbed to cancer, leaving the young fifteen year old in charge of his family. The fact that these events caused Roethke to look at his father with ambivalence seems to be reflected in the poem, as its tone is a strange mixture of the affectionate love of a little boy and a slightly more suspicious and adult distrust and betrayal. The very first impression of the poem is one of a joyous frolic around the house and the happiness of the young boy at this special moment with his father comes out very clearly, especially in the beginning of the second stanza; "We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf" and at the last stanza where he describes his father keeping time on his head as he danced him off to tuck him into bed. That the memories are very personal stands out in the details of the poem; he describes the whiskey on his father's breath, the fact that his father's hands had dirt still on them. Since his father worked in a greenhouse, these details are no doubt drawn from his memories and show his father as the slightly rough, honest hard worker he was. It is clear that this memory is a happy one for him and is also reminiscent of my own dances with my father. However, the later experiences also colour this memory. It is not the unadulterated memory of a child. Certain words and phrases jar a bit with the pleasant nature of this picture. When he describes hanging to his father "like death" it is a little out of place. However given that his brother committed suicide after a fight with their father it seems plausible that Roethke might have held his father responsible for the death and as he matured into adulthood inappropriately early following his father's death he might also have felt resentment towards his father for leaving him with such a burden. These undercurrents of adult feeling do mar the perfect picture of an otherwise normal and happy episode. However, the fact that he describes this episode with such feeling and vividness also emphasizes the fact that he did indeed love his father when he was a child, and it also has a touch of longing and loss in its tone. It seems to imply that he misses those small moments of intimacy with his father, and knows they will never come again. It is for this reason that I connect with the poem so much, as I myself lost my father three years ago when I moved to new York, leaving him in Taiwan. I shared many moments like this with my father and these memories are tinged with the knowledge that I can never have them again. There is also a resentment that they finished too early in life. He was thrust into an adult world too early and therefore this memory is even more special as it will never come again, and perhaps did not happen enough when he was a child. This emotion and memory perhaps has more meaning for me as I too used to have these moments with my father, before he passed away. The happiness of the memory is tinged with regret for its loss. There is an undertone of near-violence also in this poem, in the description of the father's knuckles, and death. Though there appears to be a school of thought that thinks this represents an abusive father ( Ref;Byrne) and cite the fact that the boy's ear was scraped by his father's belt buckle, and that the falling of the dishes and his mother's disapproving looks all point to the systematic abuse of the boy, I disagree. It is true that the description is a little rough and frightening sometimes. However, when I danced with my father, as a child, standing on his feet, my ear was on a level with his buckle. Therefore, it could be scraped. And the mother simply could disapprove as her nice kitchen was being messed up. I prefer to look at this as the insertion of his ambivalent feelings towards his father. The traumatic events so early in life would have caused a certain amount of resentment towards his father (and certainly, many of us do grow up with a little resentment, even if nothing so traumatic happened to us). I think it is likely that this resentment is colouring the description a little, affecting his choice of words a little bit. Nonetheless, despite the undercurrent of antagonism, the feeling overall in the poem is a happy and wistful one. It is the memory of a joyful prance around the house with a man he loved unconditionally at that age. The feelings of blame and maybe, anger and fear, came later, and have inserted themselves as well. However, it seems more of a resentment that he lost this, lost his father, or the image of the father he had at the age that is described in the poem, and was forced to look at him differently later. What makes me also convinced that this is a poem about his love for his father instead of a poem on his abuse is the use of the word "papa" in the title. It is an informal and loving term a very small boy would use. It seems too loving for a poem on abuse. Also it ends with the poet addressing his father, saying "you" while earlier when the poem started it did not address anyone as such. It seems to be an attempt to let his father know how he felt and perhaps try to express his betrayal, that he can no longer "cling" to him the way he did as a child. It is a snapshot of a moment in time he can never reproduce and though he is wistful and a little resentful, it tries to show the utter happiness and carefree nature of the little boy, revealing a wish that it could have always been that way. REFERENCES 1. Roethke, Theodore : My Papa's Waltz 2. http:// www. edwardbyrne.blogspot.com/2007/06/theodore-roethke-my-papas-waltz.html. 3. http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfmfile_id=5410 4. Southworth J. G. , The Poetry of Theodore Roethke, College English, Vol.21, No.6 (Mar 1960), pp.326-330 +335-338 Read More