My Papa's Waltz

648 Words3 Pages
“My Papa’s Waltz” “My Papa’s Waltz” is a remarkable and entertaining poem that really plays with the readers emotions. This is a simple, short Alternating Quatrain Poem, which means it rhymes in an ABAB type rhythm. Theodore Roethke (author of this poem), took a simple sounding poem and turned it into a head scratcher, with more than one theme. It is an amazing poem that can be read once and understood one way, then read again and be comprehended in a totally different way. “My Papa’s Waltz” is a magnificent short poem, with great tone and use of symbolism that also displays more than one example of theme. “My Papa’s Waltz” shows a young boy that either really loves or hates his father, depending on which theme you’re thinking of. As mentioned earlier there is more than just once theme in this poem, which makes this such an interesting poem. One way to look at this poem is where a hardworking father and his son are simply just horse playing, and wrestling around the house late one weekend night. Now this is the side of the story that I see, and the theme for this said would be the importance of family. This could be the theme for this subject because in the poem the boy seems to truly enjoy the horse play with his father, as it says in the poem “Then waltzed me off to bed / Still clinging to your shirt” (15-16), which shows he wants to keep playing and not go to bed. The other theme/subject is a little darker, where it seems that a drunken father comes home late one night to beat on his son. The theme for this subject is simple, “Abuse”, as this shows a young boy being beat. An example of this in the poem is when it says, “The hand that held my wrist / Was battered on one knuckle” (9-10), which shows the boy is being beat. Another important part of this poem is symbolism. Now in such a short poem like this there are not many symbols. With that said, there is
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