My Papa's Waltz Substance Abuse

Scott Russell Sanders’ “Under the Influence” is about a family growing up with alcoholism, mental and physical abuse. When Sanders was very young, he didn’t recognize that his father was an alcoholic, but as he grew older, he saw the bloodshot eyes, hiding alcohol, the deceptions, and the dual personalities of an alcoholic. “My father drank. He drank as a gut-punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food—compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling.” (215). Sanders story starts at the end, where his father dies from alcoholism. The turmoil and fear this family suffered because of their father’s alcoholism, is a story a lot of families are familiar with.

The first stanza, which contains the son’s childish speech, is short, only three lines. However, by the stanza which contains the son’s angry talkback, the stanza is double in length, having four lines. Each line represents a literal level of maturity and growth that the son has gained. As time moves on, he is able to gain more and more experience in life. As his experience accumulates over time, so does his hostility. His terse, childish begging for his father to simply read another story turns to an angry speech about how he no longer beleievs in his father as an authority figure. Despite this, the son’s psyche changes back, as all this maturation is played out in the father’s head, and when he returns, he is back to his childish self, bu this stanza is the longest in the poem. This suggests that when someone is able to mature enough, they are able to comprehend more of the world than they did before, and are able to act

In a literary criticism written by Bobby Fong, which addresses the opposing possibilities of abuse and horse play of this poem, is quickly snuffed out when Fong states that most students regard the poem as a happy tale of a tipsy father playing with his child. Fong then writes how the same students said some of the finest moments with their fathers were when their fathers’ were drinking, and how “This “papa” was not the man they knew, so there was some anxiety felt regarding the “stranger,” but he was what these students as children wanted more often from their fathers.” (Fong) There is a reference to this uneasiness or anxiety in Roethke’s poem in line three which says “But I hung on like death:” (Roethke). However, despite the rough housing what the boy enjoyed the most was his father’s unhinged wild side, and that he was included in it.

“The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy” (Roethke line 1-2). The boy could remember how heavily drenched in whiskey his father was. The l boy

Throughout the decades, alcoholism has become a common issue that has become the cause of the deterioration of many relationships. In Scott Russell Sanders essay, “Under the Influence”, it is demonstrated how his relationship with his father continuously weakens due to the effects of alcohol. In order to create a deeper understanding of the impacts that alcohol consumption has on families, Sanders uses information from sources such as medical journals with actual statistics that increase the relevance of the story. In Sanders’ essay, “Under the Influence”, the author uses references such as dictionaries, medical journals, and the

Some people drink for the sport of getting drunk. However, in this poem, the father is not a pleasant drunk to be around. When the speaker states "We romped until the pans / slid from the kitchen shelf," the reader gets the impression that the father is roughhousing with the son (5-6). It is not until the speaker says "The hand that held my wrist (9)" that one realizes that he is being physically held by his father. The child has no choice but to keep on "waltzing." There is nobody that is going to stop what is going on in this house due to the fact that the mother is simply watching. The boy did not realize his father was doing anything wrong until he remembers back to his childhood and comes to understand what really happened. He discovers that his childhood wasn't actually like everyone else. That may be why the speaker is now looking back on these drunken nights and remembering how horrible they were.

You spend your whole day at the Owl Club. You act like it’s not your responsibility”(Walls 69). Boy’s father has a limited drinking problem. He doesn’t think it is too much of a problem because he can still support his family and he is just slightly rough when he drinks, for example, he was horseplaying with his son and he was slightly dizzy from the whiskey that he drank. My Papa’s

Prominent essayist and novelist, Scott Russell Sanders, in his essay, “Under the Influence” (1989), describes how having an alcoholic parent shapes a person. Sanders’s purpose is to reflect on his bleak youth and its lasting effects on his adulthood. He adopts a resentful tone in order to convey to readers who have no experience of growing up with an alcoholic that alcohol abuse is destructive.

Child abuse is physical mistreatment that unfortunately happens to children everywhere around the world. In the same way, the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, describes and gives the readers an insight of what child abuse is like. The poem presents a relationship between a drunken father and his son. Therefore, the setting, sensory details, and word choice of the poem allows the reader to understand the violence the little boy goes through after his father returns from work.

From the moment his child is born, a man's world changes. He is no longer Jim, Tim or Greg, but father. His child entrusts him to be a guide, a teacher, but foremost, a protector; their shield from the horrors of an uncertain world. It’s a thankless job, but worth the safety of his child; unless of course, he’s one jeopardizing it. In his poem, “My Papa’s Waltz,” Theodore Roethke describes a neglectful and abusive dance between a father and young son.

Theodore Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz” is ambiguous and contains mixed feelings about his father. Throughout his life, Roethke had problems relating to alcohol addiction and psychological breakdowns (McRoberts, n.d.). As an adult to confront personal tensions, he uses his childhood memories to create a window into the past to move forward with his life. We learn his father had been drinking whiskey from the lines “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy” (1-2). “A simile is a figure of speech comparing two unlike things that is often introduced by like or as” (simile, n.d.). Roethke uses a simile to describe his perspective of the dance and life with his father as a child with the lines “But I hung on like death: Such waltzing

Theodore Roethke uses literary devices such as imagery and simile to illustrate the father's drunken behavior. In the poem the speaker describes the father having whiskey on his breath,“the whiskey on your breath”. This quote from the poem leads the reader to believe that the father has been drinking, and maybe even

The poem starts off by introducing the boy’s father as an alcoholic by stating he could smell “the whiskey on [his] breath” (131). Although his father is an alcoholic and the boy’s encounter makes him “dizzy” or tired of it, the boy still “hung on to him like death”. Even though the boy knows that his father has a problem, he still loves him to death and he will till the end. “Such waltzing was not easy” shows that having a father like him was not favorable, but the boy still shows undisputable love.

People say there are many types of drunk stereotypes in the world: the fun drunk, the romantic drunk, the destructive drunk, the list goes on and on. “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke is about a drunk father who came home from work and is waltzing with his son. The ABAB rhyme scheme makes the poem sound like a waltz like the title suggests, but the diction makes the poem heavy. The ambiguity in this poem, based on the diction, leads to two different images, both include a drunk father but one is abusive and the other is happy.

Theodore Roethke wrote a poem called My Papa’s Waltz regarding his father when he will come home with whiskey on his breath. This poem’s mood is a little playful but with sadness. The poet by using the word “waltz” could be speaking about that he enjoyed playing with his father or he could be speaking about how his father will be intoxicated and mistreated him. Roethke tells how he dislike his father’s breath of alcohol. According to Roethke, “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy; / But I hung on like death” (1-3). The impact in his poem is of fear and possible mistreatment. The author simile/metaphor is using the word waltz as a means of saying his father probably was unbalanced because he was intoxicated, but he also used the word beat perhaps to indicate that he was mistreated. This poem has appeal because the author combined opposite words, waltz and beat, to portrait a metaphor.