Essay On My Papa's Waltz

As the man lay in bed he watched as the world passed him slowly, but surely leaving him in the past. He was in a state of comatose; he could see and hear everything, but could do nothing as his life was frozen in place. The people he knew eventually moved on and decided it was better to live without the burden. He had made sure people would not be hindered by his condition. Deep down inside of him he felt regret that he had made everyone leave him to his own thoughts. He felt selfish, because he did not want to be alone any longer. He lived with this regret until many years had passed by and a miracle occurred; he was able to move. Twelve long years in a hospital with no interaction, other than ones that occurred with physicians and nurses, the
He turned his experience with his father into a poem about it that went deep into his thought about it. He did this because he lived in a post-World War II world that still had fresh wounds and he wanted to break tradition and create his own style to show the world that habits, such as war can be broken even if it is in the past. He also used this poem to show order and disorder in the world. He used the waltz to do this, the father and son waltz, but the son struggle which brings to life the daily struggles for the son to keep up. The waltz was an organized dance in an unorganized life of a young boy. Roethke’s purpose in writing the poem “The Lost Son” was more to delve into his subconscious of when he was a child. He wrote about his psyche and how the lose of his father affected him. This was more on the lines of spiritual enlightening and the quest to gain this in a time of need. This also pulls from the torn apart world, but this poem has less of a purpose than “My Papa’s Waltz,” rather than having a deep meaning it was rather personal and just was a remembrance of the grief he felt after his father’s