My Papa's Waltz: - Theodore Roethke

My Papa's Waltz
The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist

Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head

With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
-Theodore Roethke
When analyzing a poem, it is important to be familiar with the author’s biography.
Theodore Roethke expressed a disturbing childhood memory of his father in My Papa’s Waltz.
The poem depicts his father as a drunken man who carelessly dances with his son. The poem is
written from Roethke’s point of view when he was a child. This poem portrays the confusion
and fear that he experienced while dancing with his abusive father.
Theodore Roethke was born in 1908 in Saginaw, Michigan. He was a sensitive soul
forced to conform to the hard working middle class mentality of the Midwest. His sensitivity
was not appreciated so he learned how to shield himself with a rebellious spirit that protected
him from the mockery he endured at an early age. His father in particular did not appreciate his
son’s delicate nature. Having the sensitivity of a poet in a harsh environment where men are
supposed to be tough was an unwelcome attribute which his father did not appreciate. In My
Papa’s Waltz, the tone is not one of a victim, so this poem is often misconstrued as a pleasant
dance between a son and a jovial father. However, by careful analysis of the selected words that
Roethke chose in the poem, it is evident that he suffered from his father’s lack of understanding
and rough handed approach in childrearing.
Roethke’s troubling childhood affected him throughout his life. His relationship with his
father particularly shaped his view of himself and affected the way in which he interacted with
the world. In his journals he spoke about himself in the third person, “He was like one who had
carefully preserved himself from being a sissy” (Seager, 1991). He also expressed hatred for his
father who died when he was only 15 years old. In analyzing My Papa’s Waltz, the unexpressed
fear and mistrust which he held for his father is symbolized in the dance.
The tone of the first stanza is dark, suggesting unease and unhappiness with the dance.
He struggles to dance with a drunken man whose breath makes him dizzy. His mother
disapproves of the dancing which is so forceful that pots and pans fall from on the floor. The
father insists they continue which evokes childhood feelings of doing something wrong. It
conjures up sexual images in the lines, “My mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself”.
This incongruity of dancing with disapproval is a powerful image that suggests that the boy was
feeling conflicted.
The description of the father’s hand further illustrates the roughness of the man’s nature.
Roethke says, “You beat time on my head” which suggests that this was a rough dance, not a
pleasant one. His father forces the reckless dancing that takes place in the kitchen. The imagery
of the father’s harsh hands hitting the boy on top of his head to keep him in beat with time shows
that the boy remembers the roughness more than any pleasantness coming from this experience.
He describes the hand as being “battered on one knuckle” and “caked hard by dirt”. This further
illustrates the roughness of the dance which contrasts with Roethke’s sensitive nature.
Therefore, this dance is not a pleasant memory but portrays a conflict between the father and son
to which the son must acquiesce to his father’s desires. The conflict of personalities is also
symbolized by the drunken state of the father, and the boy who goes along with it before being
danced to bed. The boy was tucked in by this man; “Still clinging to his shirt”. This line does
not conjure up images of a happy child, but one that clings on fearfully. “I hung on like death”
he says, “Such dancing was not easy”. Bedtime is a time when children need to feel safe and
loved. It is apparent that Roethke did not feel safe with his father and expresses it in this poem.
In his journals, Theodore Roethke described his father as a stern and hot tempered man.
He didn’t think that his father truly loved him. From a detached third person point of view he
wrote, “Most of all he remembered his childhood…he was afraid of the very idea of life.
Sometimes he almost hated to be alive” (Seager, 1991). My Papa’s Waltz epitomizes the secret
loneliness that he was unable to express during his childhood. The poem eloquently paints a
picture of a complex relationship between a sensitive misunderstood child, and a harsh father
who was oblivious to his son’s needs.
References
Seager, Allan. (1991). The glass house: the life of Theodore Roethke, University of Michigan
Press. Retrieved on January 17, 2011 from: http://books.google.com/books?
id=OdrIchCSEAYC&pg=PA287&lpg=PA287&dq=theodore+roethke+psychosis&source
=bl&ots=GJ683SHHXK&sig=PX1O3liVkd-u-
WdmE5Tei_Oqjo4&hl=en&ei=vpoRTZSfE42WsgO3_bymDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&
ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDEQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

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My Papa's Waltz: - Theodore Roethke

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My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath

We romped until the pans

The hand that held my wrist

You beat time on my head

and rough handed approach in childrearing.

who was oblivious to his son’s needs.

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