Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan on May 25, 1908 to Otto Roethke and Helen Huebner. Along with uncle, his mother and father owned a local greenhouse, where Roethke spent a lot of his childhood days working and playing. He referred to the greenhouse as “my symbol for the whole of life, a womb, a heaven-on-earth” ( ). The greenhouse played a huge role in his poetry. Roethke implies that only after death of the self can people come to realize the true purpose of life, love. Roethke always had stored in the back of his mind “the idea that personal selves were not the focus of time on earth”( ). Therefore, people must experience the death of their selves before they can truly live.

At first glance, “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke is very intriguing as the poem is very ambiguous at first. Many people that read the poem at first believe it to be about child abuse, which is very easy for readers of the 21st generation to confuse as we see everything with a dark meaning behind it. The poem is about a boy who dances with his father, hence the name of the poem “My Papa’s Waltz”. Once the poem has been reread several times, we can take a closer look at what Roethke is really implying in the poem. Therefore, it becomes clear to the audience that the poem has a lighter meaning and has a more positive outlook than a negative outlook to the situation occurring in the poem.

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.

Drinking impairs a person’s judgement beyond repair. However, being heavily intoxicated daily allows a person to become very neglectful to the people around them. Alcoholics don’t just destroy themselves; they destroy everyone and everything around them. “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke shows just how bad alcohol damages a family. In “My Papa’s Waltz” negligence can be seen coming from the drunk father and the mother. The father in the poem neglects his son in the sense that his son has no idea what is really happening.

The poems “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden are two poems that both describe a father’s relationship with their son. My Papa’s Waltz suggests that a boy’s farther that is an alcoholic and regardless of his alcohol abuse his son clings onto him as they dance together. In “Those Winter Sundays” it is implied that a boy is reflecting on how hard his farther worked, but he had not been appreciative and had taken his father’s hard work for granted. Though the relationships are very different, both poets use writing techniques and literary devices such as imagery, form, and sound to effectively describe the relationships between a farther and son. “Those Winter Sundays” uses figurative language

The poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke has an overall sorrowful tone showing the narrator’s sadness from his childhood experiences with his father. In the first stanza, the poem describes that his father is always drunk and treats him poorly. For example, “The whiskey on your breath: could make a small boy dizzy,” shows that his father was always drunk when the narrator saw him. Also the speaker stated, “But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy.” This represents that the father was always abusing the narrator, which shows the sorrowful tone in the poem.

The poems “My Father’s Song” by Simon J. Ortiz and “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, these two poems express uniqueness and similarities. In the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” a young child describes his time spent with his father. In the poem “My Father’s Song” a grown man remembers the previous memories of time spent with his father, when he was a child. These two poems coincide through tone, word choice, and figurative language to show the relationship between a father and son.

A parent in a child's life is a role model in there eyes. If one has bad influences on your child, in what way do would think one may impact on his or her life. The narrative poem “My papa’s Waltz”, is written by Theodore Roethke in 1948. Papa is a extremely hard working man by the show of his hands. Papa and his son are in the kitchen waltzing around remarkably rough, while mother is not too happy about it. While the father and son are dancing around the son keeps getting hurt. While in the end papa waltzed his son right off to bed. In the narrative poem “My Papa’s Waltz”, Roethke uses symbolism and imagery to reveal the theme, parents impact children's life, even after they are grown.

The poem My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke is about a small child having fun with his drunk father by waltzing. The poem is written in the perspective of a small child because in the beginning stanza says “ The whiskey on your breath can make a small boy dizzy.” The theme of this poem iis happy . It is clear this is the theme of this poem because this poem has happy moments . The tone of the poem is Hopeful because while the father and son were dancing the mother was frowning. It is clear this is the tone because in the poem it says. “ ”. The phrase that gives the tone because . The tone is also conveyed by the word “ Then waltzed me off to bed still clinging on to your shirt.” The tone is also conveyed by the phrase a happy time

“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke sounds like a light-hearted anecdote about a boy and his father dancing until one examines it a little more carefully. The fun tone falls apart upon closer examination and the complexity becomes clear. The poem is cheerful, yet melancholy as if the speaker knows that the memories would not be considered happy ones for most. The first line of the poem, “The whiskey on your breath” plants the idea that excess in general, especially with alcohol, may be common practice for the boy’s father (1). Roethke’s poem is a fairly accurate summary of life with a functional alcoholic for a parent.

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.

Readers of poetry appreciate poems that challenge their thinking and require critical analysis of various elements to determine an appropriate interpretation. One such poem is Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” which combines character, setting, and word choice to create questions in the reader’s mind. Looking closely, it appears that Theodore Roethke portrays a scene of un-intentional abuse between a father and his young son.

The poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke looks into the relationship of a father and son back in Theodore Roethke childhood. In this poem the son admires his father very much and reminisce on the things they once did together. “My Papa’s Waltz” shows the love or fear between a son and father, how hard the father works to take care of the family and the special bond the father and son shared in dancing together.

“The classic model of a family with a father as the breadwinner who is not emotionally involved in the children’s lives is becoming obsolete.” (Fathers Who Hurt Their Children.) Bad family problems lead to depression among the kids that witness it. Some feel like it’s their fault they’re getting abused. More than half of parents who abuse their children are intoxicated while doing it; they are not accountable for their actions. In the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Roethke, a son gets abused by his drunk father. No matter what he tries to do, the two just seem to “waltz” endlessly around the house. The boy “clings to [his] shirt” (Roethke, 16) as his father continues to beat “time” on his head. Roethke grew up loving to spend time in the greenhouse. All these magnificent sights he was seeing eventually led him to adding tons of imagery into his works. With his mental state being precarious, his mood swings were horrible. He spent his life dealing with being mentally unstable. Losing that ability to be stable and having a “normal”, “traditional” family is something that is longed by this boy. Death is hard enough, especially when you have extra things on top of it to worry

Theodore Roethke’s, “My Papa’s Waltz” is a short but extremely powerful poem. The message Theodore Roethke is delivering in this poem is that love will always oust hate. The speaker recalls numerous tragic events he would endure throughout his childhood that most others would certainly want to bury deep away and never relive. The speaker thinks back to nights his father would barge into their house like an angry storm. His breath reeking of whiskey as he lashed out on the ones who loved him the most. He recalls times looking to his mom for strength, only to be met by the harsh reality, she was just as helpless as he was. You would think one would have resentment and hate towards such a man, but that certainly isn’t the case in this story as the speaker still yearns for his troubled father’s love.