Poetry is a unique art. Nowhere else can twenty-six simple characters be organized into relatively few carefully-worded lines to create innumerable perspectives on the parts of life and the world that we hold most dear—all at the will of a single person. In poetry, hardships, struggles, passions, and desires come alive as they embrace loaded words and a special array of metaphors, rhyme, and figurative language that not only depict them but also serve to elicit a higher meaning not explicitly mentioned in the text. A fantastic example of the power and intensity of this extraordinary art form is Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz.” This short but impressive work utilizes the creative effects of diction, contradictory imagery, and extended metaphor to illustrate the troubled relationship between a young child and his father. Through their elicitation of emotions and their overall creation of a rather violent, but satiric tone, these devices ultimately work together throughout the sixteen short lines to create a central contrast and theme within the poem that keeps the reader thinking and questioning until the very end.
Roethke’s diction begins this slow and carefully-orchestrated effect by utilizing the connotations of various key words in order to form a variety of imagery and feelings that, as a whole, contribute to the overall tone of the poem. For example, throughout the poem we see the presence of words such as “romped”, “unfrown,” and “hung,” alluding to a sense of fun and playfulness. Right next to those words, however, we happen to find opposing, more negative words, such as “scrapes,” beating,” and “death,” whose connotations give the reader a sense of violence and cold fear and directly contrast with the feelings evoked by the happier words around them. Similarly, words such as “dizzy” and “missed” give way to feelings of confusion and disorientation, serving to add a third volatile emotion into the battle. As a result, the poem develops a particular tension that then allows Roethke’s other important devices to take shape and begin taking effect.
Among the most important of these devices is imagery. Due to the various emotions involved in the words and the tension existing between the respective groups, the text begins to develop vivid images that help to create a visual depiction of the relationship between the boy and his father. We are shown the boy “[hanging] on to [his father] like death.” We witness “[romping] until the pans slid off the kitchen shelf” and the father “beating time on [the boy’s] head.” We also hear about the boy’s “right ear [scraping] a buckle” whenever something went awry in their relationship. As a result of these images, we begin to notice that abuse is a problem and that violence is very much a part of their relationship.
Yet, while these examples seem to clearly demonstrate the situation between the two, we as readers are still thrown off by the use of the happier words by the speaker and are simply left with a tone of tension and confusion. With such contradictory feelings, we are left to question if this poem is supposed to have a positive or negative tone and if the speaker is comfortable or upset about his relationship with his father. In turn, we begin to perceive a certain struggle between happiness and fear of violence within the speaker’s tone and in the speaker himself and slowly begin to see the hardship that Roethke is trying to illustrate. Torn between every man’s natural tendencies to love his father and the instinctive ways in which we all avoid physical injury, Roethke’s speaker in the poem is consumed with a fight within himself of which there is no obvious solution and is thus placed in a vicious cycle that never really ends. As a result, the struggle forms the central theme of the poem and the primary character conflict whose mere nature causes us as readers to question ourselves and our motives during similar situations.
Furthermore, this central struggle is finally lodged into place by the extended metaphor of the waltz, which puts all of Roethke’s imagery into a context that keeps the poem organized and effective through a number of clever effects. For one, the idea of a waltz, or any dance for that matter, suggests a certain intimacy and partnership, two ideas that directly contrast with the violent imagery that the speaker utilizes. Consequently, this contradiction thus helps to further develop the tension and confusion experienced by the speaker and thus enhances the central theme of his struggle. Furthermore, the dance metaphor also implies the idea of rhythm, giving the reader a sense of repetition, which, in many ways, describes the pattern of the relationship between the speaker and his father as everlasting and cyclical. This makes sense when the first and last quatrains are brought into consideration. In both, there exists the imagery of holding on, using phrases like “but I hung on like death” and “still clinging to your shirt.” Furthermore, the image of going to bed in the last quatrain suggests that the end of the waltz, or struggle, is only temporary and that there is no guarantee the following day will present a solution to the speaker’s problem. In the end, the waltz provides a unifying factor throughout the poem that ultimately keeps Roethke’s message clear and unobstructed.
In conclusion, “My Papa’s Waltz” is a poem about hardship, pain, and making tough decisions. Describing a cyclical conflict of emotion within the speaker regarding his father, the poem demonstrates how hard life can be sometimes and how difficult those issues can be to handle. Yet, despite the accurate description of struggle, we, as readers, are ultimately left with no conclusion and knowledge of how the speaker resolves these problems. Does he finally work something out with his father? Does he choose to forgive him? Does he choose to love him? In the end, we don’t know, but that’s the point. Roethke’s message is simply that things don’t always get fully resolved and that sometimes it’s best merely to deal with one’s issues rather than try to resolve them. As a result, “My Papa’s Waltz” leaves us with the important lesson that not everything in life is easy or has an answer, but as long as we keep focused on our issues, the best possible outcome can always happen.
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