My Papa's Waltz 11/16

"My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke

Theodore Roethke was born in 1908 is Saginaw, Michigan. Roethke graduated from U of M in 1929 but felt like school was not for him. He began to dedicate all of his time to writing. He established a reputation in the literary world with every publication. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954 and was close friends with many other acclaimed writers. He died in 1963.

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.

Initially I read this poem and assumed it was about a child being abused by his father. With one read through it is easy to take that stance because of the details Roethke provides about his father. For example, the very first line says, “The whiskey on your breath.” Someone with the smell of whiskey lingering on their breath is assumed to be drunk but in a violent, certainly not loving, way because whiskey is a hard liquor. Also in stanza’s 3 and 4, Roethke uses harsh verbs like “scraped” and “beat” when describing his interactions with his father. The mood those words create lead the reader to assume it is a story about child abuse.

However, upon the second and third read-through, I found that many of the lines that led me to believe that this was a poem about abuse actually had two meanings and interpretations. For example, the line, “You beat time on my head” I originally inferred as literal beating and abuse but now I read it as the father keeping time by tapping the little boy’s head as they waltzed.

There seems to be an overall tension surrounding this poem. It was written in 1948 and the narrator is reflecting on his childhood. The reader can infer that his childhood was during the Great Depression. His father, therefore may have been working hard labor to earn enough money for the family which would explain the calloused and dirty hands. His family also may have had money problems such as rent and other expenses, which correlates to the looming tension throughout the poem because money was an ever-present worry. However, the narrator is choosing to remember a happy memory in which he danced with his father despite the depressing times. We often remember the Great Depression as a dark time in America’s history, however Roethke is trying to convey through the double meaning of the poem that, although the Great Depression may look one way from the outside, he remembers the enjoyable times he had with his father.