My Father’s Waltz By Theodore Roethke (1942) Michelle Parker ENG 125 December 1, 2012 Things I found engaging in “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke (1942) were the language the content, and the theme. The language was compelling because it was really the thoughts of a young boy trying the help his drunken father get to bed. The content was engaging because it just showed the struggle he was dealing with. The ambiguous nature of family relationships is the theme. An example of the language in the poem that helps you “see” what the boy is thinking and feeling is: “The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy But I hung on like death” (1942) And, “The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle.
He loves his son and was not deliberately trying to hurt him here it's just that he was drunk and didn't realize he was scaring and hurting the kid. The first couple of lines suggest that they may be dancing, or in this case waltzing it is clear that with the authors word choice there is a sizable difference in the physical build to the boy and his father. “The whiskey on your breath/could make a boy dizzy” (lines 1-2) The way the boy expresses his though about his fathers breathe is shown that this isn’t the first time he has smelled whiskey on his breath,
A Jewish Life Under the Tsars: The Autobiography of Chaim Aronson, 1825-1888. Translated by Norman Marsden. Totowa, New Jersey: Allenheld, Osmun, 1983. Bailik, Hayyim Nahman. “Before Thirty,” in Memoirs of my People Through a Thousand Years, ed.
Christian Cacace 5/6/14 Prof. Drucker English 102 Appreciation “Those Winter Sundays” is a poem by Robert Hayden about a hard working foster father who is not appreciated by anyone. Having come from a poor family and loving a foster father who loved the door next to his parent’s place it made him write a poem about his foster father. The poem is about a man who has to wake up all the days of the week to work and support his family. Since he has to do hard chores during the week, his hands ache on Sundays but he can’t rest because he has to make the fire and do his daily work. The son cannot wake up until he feels that the room is warm from the fire lit by his father.
The father, although he is drunk, is not angry or mean, he is just trying to be playful. It is with this playfulness, that he causes the boy pain. While the boy likes to dance with his father, the speaker also indicates to us that the experience is not a pleasant one. The speaker paints the picture of a drunk, stumbling father who, without meaning to, hurts the boy; “At every step you missed/My right ear scraped a buckle” (11-12). The tone of the poem indicates that the boy is yearning for a dance without any missed steps.
Autobiography of benjamin Franklin. New York: Dodd. Mead and company, 1963. Print. Hornberger, Theodore, and GordonWood.
Poetry is much more difficult to write than an essay and because of this there are fewer “great” works of poetry than there are books or short stories. The poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke is a very well known and wonderfully written poem because of how well the author expresses the speaker’s relationship with his father. From the first line of the poem the reader can tell that the relationship between the speaker and his father is probably not a very loving relationship. He tells that the whiskey smell on his father’s breath could make a small boy dizzy. This leads the reader to believe that the two probably had a strained relationship much of the time due to the alcoholism his father struggles with.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce 15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 17. Animal Farm by George Orwell 18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 19.
Franz Landsberger, Rembrandt, The Jews and The Bible (Philadelphia, 1946), 9-10. Arthur M. Hind, Rembrandt (Cambridge, MA, 1932), 1. William H. Halewood, Six Subjects of Reformation Art (Toronto, 1982), 23, 25, 44-45. W. A. Visser 'T Hooft, Rembrandt and The Gospel (London, 1957), 11. Arthur M. Hind, Rembrandt (Cambridge, MA, 1932), 1,3.
My Papa’s Waltz "My papa's waltz" is a reflection of a childhood experience involving a father. Roethke’s use of diction and details covers the narrator's comply attitudes toward his father, the boy is a little sacred about his father. In the poem "My papa's waltz" Theodore Roethke, the narrator is reflecting on a childhood experience including his father. It appears that the young boy is afraid of his father. The first line says, "the whiskey on your breath/ could make a small boy dizzy"(1-2).