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Compare And Contrast My Papa's Waltz And Those Winter Sundays

Decent Essays

Childhood memories of family members in poetry: Emotions of bittersweet nostalgia Adame’s “My Grandmother Would Rock Quietly and Hum”, Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, and Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” are all poems based upon the speaker’s bittersweet nostalgia for the past. All three of these poems represent an episode, memory or a person from the speaker’s childhood. They manage to express the wistfulness and melancholy associated with looking back at a better time and the wisdom and insight into the struggles and sacrifices made by their family members that comes with age and experience.
The speaker of “My Papa’s Waltz” narrates an incident in which he is dancing with his father in the kitchen right before bedtime; a bit of fun and games …show more content…

The speaker of this poem is reminiscing about his childhood and thinking about his father in particular. He states, “Sundays too my father got up early” (line 1). Even on winter days, when it was “blueblack cold” and he had “cracked hands that ached” from the hard labor he performed, all through the week (lines 2-3). The speaker has a realization that saddens him, “No one ever thanked him” (line 5). He relates how he would wake up when the house was warmed up, and take his time to get out of bed and dress (lines 7-8). When he encountered his father, he spoke to him “indifferently” (line 10). In spite of the fact that his father had “driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well” (lines 11-12). He took these services performed by his father for granted, and accepted them as a matter of course. It is only now, as an adult, that he realizes how hard it must have been for his father to forsake his warm bed, and give up his one chance to rest on his day off, but he still did it out of fatherly love. The speaker laments “What did I know, what did I know” (line 13), as he regrets his ignorance and wishing he was less selfish back then, and that he had treated his father …show more content…

He remembers her generosity; how “when “el cheque” came, we went to Payless, and I laughed greedily, when given a quarter” (Lines 9-12). Her financial situation was not so good, she had to shop at the cheapest stores, but in spite of that, she always gave him a quarter, spoiling him even though she could not really afford to do so. She cooked for him, making “flour tortillas---the “papas”” (lines 20-21). She could not eat those treats herself, as “she had lost her teeth” (line 24). He is only now realizing how it must have felt to be deprived of tasty food, but she never complained. He only has a vague idea of the hardships she went through, by listening to the stories she told about her own childhood, she spoke of “Mexico, epidemics, relatives shot, her father’s hopes, of this country---how they sank” (lines 38-43). He still hears “echo of her shuffling” feet when he visits the old house (line 51). He views his grandmother as role model, for her patience and fortitude in the face of

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