My Papas Waltz by Theodore Roethke - Assignment Example

My Papa’s Waltz Dana Berg Kristin Wanderlingh WRT-201-097WB Spring 2008 This piece of literature that I have chosen to discuss in my paper is the touching poem titled “My Papa’s Waltz” written by a well known poet named Theodore Roethke. Before I could begin my research, when I read this poem, it seemed to me that the speaker in the poem was trying to connect to its reader on a more personal level. From both the mood and tone of the speaker, I sensed that the poet was reminiscing with a feeling of disgust and possibly a bit of shame. To emphasize that this poem was indeed related to his long past childhood, the poem was written in the past tense while referring to what had taken place when he was a child. From the sincerity of the words contained in the poem, there is no doubt that the poem was indeed Roethke’s own childhood experiences and not a figment of his imagination. In analyzing this poem, there were many questions that crossed my mind – “Am I convinced that it was a true personal incident that took place with the poet, or is it my own imagination? Are the feelings and emotions contained in the poem true or is it just fiction from the mind of its creator? While interpreting this poem, I am going to unravel the answers to these mysterious questions that keep haunting me. The sources that would be supporting my analysis of my research on Theodore Roethke and his poem would also be provided along with my answers. The area of my research would center on the life of Theodore Roethke, to try and unravel the mysteries that surround his poem “My Papa’s Waltz.” In attempting to analyze and interpret this poem, I am going to try and convince you the reader about the predictions I had made earlier by concluding whether they are right or otherwise. By going through such an exercise, I hope to justify my own curiosity and suspicions that I have of the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz.” About the poet: Theodore Roethke (1908 – 1963) was born to German-American parents in the year 1908 and grew up in Saginaw, Michigan. His family ran a Greenhouse complex business. Roethke, being a very vulnerable young lad found difficulty in coming to terms with the death of his father and his uncle. While doing his under graduation at the University of Michigan, he proposed to pursue a career in teaching and poetry. He was a poet who was quite famous for writing about the personal events that occurred in his life. Roethke won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for "The Waking." Theodore Roethke also won the National Book Award for “Words for the Wind” in 1958. (Biography of Theodore Roethke) In the year 1953, when at the age of forty-five, Roethke married Beatrice O’Connell. During the course of his life, Roethke was in and out of mental institutions. Despite severe lapses and constant hospitalization, Roethke continued to write because of his great passion for writing. Unfortunately, in 1963, Theodore Roethke suffered a fatal heart attack and died on Brainbridge Island, Washington. (Biography of Theodore Roethke) Even though Roethke had died, his poems are still alive and read more and more by readers all round the world. The poem - “MY PAPA’S WALTZ.” “My Papa’s Waltz”, is a recollection or reminisce of a childhood incident that took place in the poet’s life on the farms of his native place. A quick but thorough reading of this poem leads us to believe, that the poet had written this particular piece, in a mood of melancholy and sadness, at a time when he was not feeling very charitable towards the behavior of his father. From the poem we gather that after a hard day’s work, and thereafter an evening spent in drinking his father would invariably come home reeking of whiskey, so strong that the smell of whiskey made the “small boy dizzy”. On this particular evening, when the father came home, he held the child by his wrist and led him in a waltz around the kitchen. The speaker brings us (back) to the childhood impression – a close-up of the father’s hand -A hand holding a wrist is certainly aggressive and domineering than a hand holding a hand .The wrist implies a very formidable appearance of the father and emphasizes the difference in size of their hands and this is perhaps the reason why the child waltzes unwillingly. As the father-son duo waltzed around the kitchen, the father inebriated and the son an unwilling partner, they knocked down the pans from the cupboard, knocked into the furniture, while moving about haphazardly. Discussing the poem in the classroom brought out many different thoughts and ideas – most of the students felt angry and had a “vehement reaction against a poem that they saw as describing systematic child – abuse. (Reader’s Response) To all this waltzing around, the mother was a mute spectator, maybe it was either out of fear or just a sense to be resigned to this charade of a waltz. The mother stood there frozen, not even able to “unfrown” her face. This particular point proves beyond doubt that his father was not a refined character who shows concern for his son or wife, but on the other hand, he is a callous person devoid of any feeling or emotion. Another important point that confirms this fact is the poet describing how his father whirled him around the room while dancing and how his head kept brushing against his father’s buckle which made it quite painful being a small child. This point also shows the agony that the poet had to undergo when he was barely a child of eight or nine. At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle This charade of a dance was accompanied by his father keeping time on his head –The word beat is rougher than “kept” (as it kept time) His father’s hands were not only more dirty but hard; it more a club than a hand. Once the father had exhausted his energies in this macabre waltz, the son would cling to his father’s shirt “like death”, and the father would lead him to his bedroom, where he (poet) would drift into sleep. The poem seems to be an indictment of the poet’s father. Reading this poem only makes us sympathize with Theodore Roethke who as a child had to endure a very painful and terrible childhood. This poem has an autobiographical ring to it, as the poet recalls to mind this frightening incident that took place in his childhood. As with all literary works, the social, political and economic current surroundings a writer can and usually does affect a writer’s literary prowess and his creation. It also seems reasonable to assume that all writers are to some degree products of their time Irony in the poem The poem My Papa’s Waltz begins on a note of irony, in a sense that a waltz is supposed to be a dance of happiness but here the son says that during the dance he ‘hung on like death’. This morbid theme continues albeit in a toned down manner when he says that – ‘At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle Once again, the waltz is quite an easy dance, but the poet says that ‘waltzing was not easy’, proving that he suffered painfully all through the waltz. This also implies that life with his father was not at all easy. The poem leaves the reader with a sense of ambiguity and this is brought about by Roethke using the word waltz to describe the dance his father had forced him to do. It would be so much more feasible for a working class man to dance a polka, but in order to give the poem or rather his family a feeling of a genteel aspect he describes the dance as a waltz. The thought of the waltz makes the reader conjure up ideas of people who are well dressed and dancing in a beautiful huge ballroom, but as the reader continues to read he finds that what takes place there is quite contrary to how sedate a waltz is supposed to be. The poet uses such negative words as “whiskeys smell” which could “ make a small boy dizzy”, “ hang on like death”, “battered”, “scraped”, “beat time”, “palm caked hard by drift” to bring out the painful feelings and emotions he had experienced in his childhood. In fact, Ciardi sees it as a “poem of terror.” (Ciardi, 1975, (369) Structure in the poem Coming to the structure of the poem it is written in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet , composed of four couplets and a rhyming scheme style of a,b,a,b which aids to depict the rhythmic moment of a waltz. The words contained in the poem do a great job of mimicking the ¾ timing of the usual old fashioned waltz pattern with their respective beat and stress. According to Malkoff, Roethke had ambivalent feelings towards his father, whose strength was a source of admiration mixed with fear – “it was of comfort and restriction.” (Malkoff, 3) Conclusion: “My Papa’s Waltz” has evoked mixed feelings among critics and laypersons alike. Some like to think of it as a subtle manifestation of the abuse that Theodore Roethke might have suffered at the hands of his father while others look at it in a more lighter vein. Kennedy refers to it as “comedy” and “persistent love” (Kennedy, 421) That the poet had a difficult and painful childhood is well established through his biographies, but to claim that there was absolutely no love and affection between the father and son is taking things a little too far. Otto, Roethke’s father is recognized as a model for the Papa figure in the poem (Seager, 26) This fact is borne out by the use of the word “waltz” which connotes an element of romance, love and gaiety. Also the very fact that the father took the son with him to bed is another striking indication of the warm ties that were apparently present between them. The conclusions I have drawn in favor of the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke remain unchanged after my research and analysis. The truth, about what the poet had suffered at the hands of his drunken father is obvious and evident from the beginning to the end. Though it is a bit hard to believe that a child could suffer at the hands of his own parents, yet we should also understand that there are rare exceptions such as the one portrayed in Theodore’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz. Works cited page:- The biography of Theodore Roethke – life story http://www.poemhunter.com McKenna J. John, Journal on “Roethke’s Revisions and the Tone of “My Papa’s Waltz”, American Notes & Queries, Vol. 11, 1998. Magazine: ANQ, SPRING 1998, Roethke’s Revisions and the tone of “My Papa’s Waltz.” http://www.mrbauld.com/exrthkwtz.html Ciardi, John, and Miller Williams. How Does A Poem Mean? 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton, 1975 Kennedy, X. J. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 4th ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1987 Kennedy, X. J. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 4th ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1987 Seager, Allan. The Glass House: The Life of Theodore Roethke. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968. Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”: A Reader’s Response”. http://www.viterbo.edu/personalpages/faculty/GSmith/TheodoreRoethke.html Read More