Saying that the boy hung on "like" death is an example of a simile. Line 4 Such waltzing was not easy. This line wraps up the first stanza. In what could be a happy moment, father and son dancing, we see that it's kind of tricky for the son to hold on to his drunken father. Also, if the waltz of this poem is a metaphor for their father-son relationship, this could show that it's not easy to dance between loving and fearing his father's power Lines 5-6 We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; This is not a quiet, stately waltz, but a romp!
Hally’s father, an alcoholic, is an antagonist, suffering from an illness and a drinking problem. Another thing that makes Hally want to go ballistic, is when Hallys father is drunk, he will hit his mother. The father’s drinking problem has a very deleterious effect towards the family’s relationship. When his father is feeling bad, he uses alcohol as a palliative. Hally’s father is an onerous man, because he drinks instead of standing up and taking care of his responsibilities.
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.
Why do we have to pay for other peoples mistakes? In the book “Flight” by Sherman Alexie Zits deals with many disappointments in life. One of his biggest disappointments is not having a father or someone that loves him like he wants to be love, “My father was a drunk, too more in love with beer and vodka than with my mother and me. He vanished like a cruel magician about two minutes after I was born” (Alexie4). This most of been hard for him to know that his dad didn’t care for him and that he only cared about his beer and vodka.
In the two short stories it seems as if the sons’ relationships with their father were quite different, but they also had their similarities because both of them cared for their son. In the story “Powder” the father took good care of his son for he continually tried to give his son what he thought was best. He fought for the privilege to see his son after he already snuck him into a jazz club to see Thelonious Monk (Wolff 1). He was a good dad, for as his son says “He wouldn’t give up. He promised, hand on heart, to take good care of me and have me home for dinner on Christmas Eve” (Wolff 1).
“But I hung on you like death.” The boy holds on like his life depends on it because he is having so much fun, not because he is terrified as it may seem. “We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf; my mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself.” The rowdy danced in the kitchen sent pans sliding across the counter. The wording suggests that the mother may have been trying to hold back a smile. “The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle.” This line seems to point to damage done by abuse the father committed, but upon reading further the father’s palms are caked with dirt. The damage on the knuckle and the dirt on his palms suggests that his line of work is rough on his hands.
Brittney Lindsey Professor Howard English 102 29 Mar 2013 Journal 1 In The poem “My Papa Waltz”, the relationship between the speaker and his father is an abnormal relationship, his father is engaging his child in his drunken activities .Before the child drifts of to sleep, he gets the opportunity to dance with his father .The Father is so drunk that the alcohol on his breath second handily intoxicates his son and makes him dizzy along with the fast paced dancing. Even though this dancing is an annoyance to his mother, and the child is well aware of this. The son continues to hold on to his drunken father in comfort no matter what the circumstances are. I feel like the son is gaining comfort from his father because, he may not receive any attention at all from his father when he is sober and this is his only opportunity to bond with his father even though he is intoxicated with alcohol. In “The Secretary’s Chant” The speaker turns herself into a machine in comparison to the objects that surround her in her everyday scene as a secretary.
Roethke’s work plants very vivid images in his reader’s mind that paint a very clear image of the boy and his drunken father. The readers can almost smell the whisky on the father’s breath; it is as if they are right there with him. The imagery that Roethke uses creates a very loving atmosphere, but at the same time the reader can feel that there is a strain between the family. In the line “But I hung on like death” (3) it is immediately perceived to have a negative connotation. But looking closer it becomes very clear that it is the complete opposite.
It was like night and day as weekdays turned into weekends and father figures turning me into an agitated and frusterated kid. He would pour his rum mixed with cubes of ice as he poured his orange juice to sweeten the bitterness. Sanders uses a reference of Theodore Roethke's lines of his father saying "The Whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death" quoted in Sanders essay placed me back into my childhood as his slurred words whipped through my nose and fueled my anger. He saw it in my face every time as he also became agitated and complaining about hes first thoughts about life
The modern reader may be struck by the neighbours' driving the young Seamus home - his parents may not have a car (quite usual then - Heaney was born in 1939, and is here at boarding school, so this is the 1950s) or, more likely, were too busy at home, and relied on their neighbours to help. The father, apparently always strong at other funerals, is distraught (very upset) by his child's death, while the mother is too angry to cry. “Big Jim” (apparently a family friend) makes an unfortunate pun - he means to speak of a metaphorical “blow”, of course. The young Seamus is made uneasy by the baby's happiness on seeing him, by hand shaking and euphemisms (evasions, like “Sorry for my trouble”), and by whispers about him. When late at night the child's body is returned Heaney sees this as “the corpse” (not a person).