The Mood Of My Papa's Waltz By Theodore Roethke

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“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke is a popular poem with contested meanings, but I personally think that the author himself has created a negative feeling to the poem based on negative words like whiskey, death, battered and beat which are found throughout the poem. In the beginning of the poem the poet used imagery and word choice to create a negative feeling based on the description of the image. These images may seem positive, but the words added a negative feeling behind the positive scene. During this moment the boy is dancing with his father and can smell the strong stench of whiskey coming from his father’s mouth. In the poem the poet describes this moment by saying “The whiskey on your breath/ Could make a small boy dizzy;/ But …show more content…
During this moment the father is dancing “waltzing” with his son and seems very uncoordinated based on the poet’s use of the word romped. At the moment the mother’s facial expression seems sad, disappointed and even angry. The poet describes this moment by saying “ We romped until the pans/ Slid from the kitchen shelf;/ My mother’s countenance/ Could not unfrown itself/ The hand that held my wrist/ Was battered on one knuckle/ At every step you missed/ My right ear scraped a buckle” (5-12). This section of the poem clearly shows the negative feeling created in the poem based on the reckless movement of the dance and the mother's facial expression which is unable to “unfrown” itself. When it says “the hand that held my wrist” (9) it shows that the boy refuses to give his hand causing the father to hold his wrist. This makes the dance seem almost forced. Also the fact that the dance is described as reckless instead of smooth and graceful like a regular waltz show the force the father is using to cooperate the son. Plus when it says “At every step you missed /My right ear scraped a buckle” (11-12). The fact that the father missed a lot of steps shows he doesn’t have full control over his body, which once again indicates that he’s
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