My Papas Waltz :: essays research papers

A drunk DanceTheodore Roethkes My Papas Waltz tells the reader of a small male childs memory of his father. It explains how his father is intoxicated and the injection that goes along with it, using the word waltz to unwrap it.In the scratch line two lines, it recounts the smell of his fathers breath and the extent to which it reeked The whisky on your breath / Could make a small male child alter (1-2). As the third and fourth lines are read, a picture of a small boy hanging onto his father is instilled in the readers mind But I hung on like death / such waltzing was not easy (3-4). We would not normally associate this particular substitution class with a waltz, a word Websters Dictionary defines as a ballroom dance in 3/4 time with wholesome accent on the first beat and a basic variant of step-step-close. How mass such an elegant dance be used to describe such a scene?The fifth and sixth lines describe, sarcastically, a devilish incident where pans fall off the kitchen shelf We romped until the pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf (5-6). Finally the boys mother comes into play during the seventh and eight lines. Her facial musing Could not unfrown itself (8). This tells us that the mother was displeased but its rather shrewd that she made no attempt at intervening. We would normally think of a mothers love as unconditional and willing to do anything for her son. It really shows the degree of fear the father must have enter into the mother with his actions.The eleventh through fourteenth lines describe actual, bodily violate done to the young boy by way of his fathers acts At every step you missed / My right ear scraped a distort / You beat time on my head / With a wield caked hard by dirt (11-14). We can actually picture the boy clinging to his father as his ear scrapes the fathers belt buckle and his watch bumps hard onto the boys head. I believe this song tells a rather disturbing story of a boys time with his father in a very sarcastic wa y. I believe the theme to it is the sarcasm itself. It shows how some things that are bad can be described as good.