Tragically Happy Waltz

"My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke

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.




I think in “My Papa’s Waltz,” Theodore Roethke uses a combination of a definite control of tone as well as a specific portrayal of the poem’s speaker to enhance the reader’s understanding of the poem and its meaning. The poem can be interpreted in two main different ways. The first being the idea that the speaker is disturbed remembering his painful childhood with a drunken father. The second interpretation is the idea that the speaker is remembering a happy, playful scene from growing up with his father. I personally feel that the poem should be understood through both interpretations as I think the speaker portrays a tragically happy memory of his childhood.

The language of Roethke’s poem can be seen as a proponent of both interpretations of “My Papa’s Waltz.” Phrases and words such as “whiskey on your breath,” “hung on like death,” “battered,” “my mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself,” and “scraped” all stress the boys bitter and resentful memories of his father. The wording leads the reader to assume that there was darkness and despair living in the house. However, the reader can also infer from phrasing such as “waltzing,” “romped,” and “clinging” that underneath the flaws of the family they was a loving relationship between the boy and his father. This makes the poem connect more to its readers because the readers become sympathetic toward the boy and want to find the good in the father. In some cases, it may become easy for the reader to look past the father drunkenly stumbling and scraping his son’s ear and to instead see the father’s good intentions in dancing with his son at the end of the day.

I think the key lines of “My Papa’s Waltz” are the final two, “Then waltzed me off to bed still clinging to your shirt.” These two lines emphasize the subject of the poem, a moment frozen in time, in the speaker’s memory, of a meaningful dance or waltz between the boy and his father. The lines also suggest the reasoning behind my belief that the poem is about a tragically happy memory. Although Roethke uses clear language to stress the speaker’s critical view of his father, he also uses vivid language, such as the word “clinging,” to stress the speaker’s undeniable love for his father. The poem is defined by the portrayal of the speaker as an honest, loving, and desperate believer in his father as well as by the tone placed upon the father through the language of the poem and the tone placed upon the hurtfulness of an event that should be one of pure joy and freedom. Dance is supposed to be free expression but for the young boy it encompasses not just a chance to play with his father in the freedom of his love, as it solely should, but also it embodies the boy’s unfortunate existence in a quite possibly broken home while yearning for his father’s sober attention.

Theodore Roethke intentionally displays the speaker in a sympathetic light, not by describing him, but rather by describing the treatment he receives from his father. This makes the poem interesting because the tone and the portrayal of the speaker take on a deeper meaning because they become the backbone of a poem that attempts to find the good in a strained but caring relationship of a father and son. The bond of a father and son should be one of the most meaningful relationships in any mans life. It is clear that the speaker knows this and feels robbed in his own life because he was denied a truly devoted relationship with his father.(613).