My Papa's Waltz: revised entry

My Papa's Waltz
by: Theodore Roethke


The whiskey on your breath
could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
such waltzing was not easy.

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.

You beat time on my head
with a palm caked hard by dirt,
then waltzed me off to bed
still clinging to your shirt. 


When first reading this poem, half of my class thought that the father in this poem was abusing the son. The other half thought that the father and son were just dancing. I thought that the father and son were just dancing. The author does use some violent language to describe the dancing. This particular use of language might give off the impression that the father is abusive to the son, but I think the violent language symbolizes how hard it was to dance the waltz. 


I can understand why my class thought the father was abusive. Just look at the lines. "...hung on like death", "At every stepped you missed, my right ear scraped a buckle", and "You beat time on my head" gives you an image that shows the father hitting the son. First off, death well sort of hangs on to you...metaphorically. Like you don't stay dead for a few hours and come back alive. Death keep you, well...dead. So I think when the author says "...hung on like death", he meant to say that the son was hanging on to his father tightly so he can keep up with the steps they were dancing together. Also, in the beginning of the poem, it says that the narrator/son is a small boy. So I think that "At every step you missed, my right ear scraped a buckle." means that the son is just small in size and only comes up to his father's waist which is why his ear scraps his father's belt when he misses a step. Lastly, sometimes when I listen to music or when I dance, I make the beat of the music on my leg or on a hard surface. I think that's what the father is doing when the poem says "You beat time on my head". The father could be keeping the beat of the waltz on the son's head. Beat sounds sort of harsh but it could just be a soft tapping also.


To sum things up, I think that the father isn't abusive and it is just the language that indicates that image for some people.