What is the theme of the poem? How do you know this is the theme?
miso1976How Imagery Reveals Theme
Although the central details in Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" relate to the father—his breath, his irregular dancing, his battered knuckles and rough hands—there are also important descriptions of the boy's responses, and the mother's, too. The details make the poem; they allow you to imagine the dance scene fully. The images of the dance disclose the ambiguous nature of family relationships, which is the poem's theme.
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)
© Bettmann/CORBIS
Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan, attended the University of Michigan, and taught at several universities, including the University of Washington. His style of teaching was dramatic and demanding. Roethke was one of a group of poets in the 1950s and 1960s known as "confessional poets" because of the intimate disclosures in their writing. Ten years before his death, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Waking. His famous poem "In a Dark Time" describes an individual's climb out of fear to become "free in the tearing wind"—a journey that can be considered as Roethke's own.
My Papa's Waltz
Theodore Roethke (1942)
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The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. |
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We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance |
5 |
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Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist |
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Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head |
10 |
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With a palm caked hard by dirt, |
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Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt. |
15 |
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"My Papa's Waltz" from Collected Poems by Theodore Roethke, each poem © individually. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. |