Analysis of Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”

Analysis of Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” Theodore Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz” illustrates a nightly ritual between a working-class father and his young son. In the first stanza a young boy holds tightly to his father. The second stanza describes a playful roughhousing between father and son. The fourth stanza shows again the boy’s unwillingness to let go of his father. Roethke’s AB rhyming scheme and waltz-like meter set a light and joyful cadence. The music of the waltz comes through in the reading and with it a carefree and innocent tone for the telling of the short amount of time between a hard-working father arriving home and the time when his son must go to bed. The lines of the first stanza bring to mind the picture of a father dancing with his child standing on the father’s feet. The father has had enough to drink to over-power the boy with the smell of his breath. The boy doesn’t seem to care as he hangs on “…like death” (3), a turn of phrase that depicts the strength of grip the boy must use to hold on to his obviously drunk and uncoordinated father. The use of the word “romped” in line five very quickly sets a boisterous and playful scene with the father and son waltzing through the kitchen and making a mess. Only this stanza makes mention of the boy’s mother. Roethke’s picture of her displays a quiet disapproval, “My mother’s countenance / Could not unfrown itself” (7-8), although she does not intervene.
Perhaps the only time they have spent together that day, the ritual holds great importance to the father and son, and while the mess in her kitchen bothers her she will not scold them or stop the chaos that has ensued. In the third stanza the father’s hands are mentioned for the first time and described as the hands of a laborer, this adds quite a bit more understanding to the scene and setting. A reflective piece published in 1942, “My Papa’s Waltz” depicts a scene set in the mid-20s. Knowledge of the working-class laborers