Missed Steps: Images of Imbalance in Theodore Roethke’s My Papa’s Waltz
Just as society is distrustful of unchecked governmental power and mounting debt, we fear imbalance in our personal lives. Imbalance doesn’t necessarily reflect a physical state, but can also reflect a shift of power in a relationship. In Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, the images of imbalance within the poem act as a representation of the power on the father’s side in his relationship with his son and his son’s reaction to his father’s actions. Traditionally, in a parent and child relationship, the parent has the upper hand and guides, punishes and instructs the child.
However, in the poem, the father and son share a somewhat unsteady relationship; the son feels a closeness and love for his father despite his father’s mistreatment of him. This constant struggle within the son’s mind puts their relationship into a constant state of imbalance. By the end of the poem, the son succumbs to the father and is forced to cling to his father’s shirt as he’s dragged off to bed. The images of imbalance reflect this constant struggle between the father and son and ultimately lead to the inescapable result of the child depending on his father.
Right from the start Roethke establishes images that suggest the father’s drunken physical and mental state and the child’s equally unsteady reaction to his father. The first two lines read, “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy.” Whiskey, a hard liquor, with the reputation of being a strong and unpredictable substance mirrors the parent’s personality and establishes a powerful setting for the poem. So powerful is the whiskey on the father’s breath that the young boy becomes dizzy from his father’s breath alone. This not only creates an image of the child unsteady on his feet, but also the child’s vulnerability in respect to his father’s tough exterior.
However, the speaker does not choose a strong word to emphasize the child’s helplessness. Instead, the speaker says that the “whiskey on (his father’s) breath could make a small boy dizzy.” Emphasis on the word ‘could’ and the fact that the statement is more uncertain and less extreme then replacing it with “makes” or “makes me” dizzy, differentiates the speaker’s comment as less accusatory, and instead more descriptive of the father’s physical state. The speaker doesn’t outright accuse his father of being drunk, but instead says that his father’s physical state may or may not be affecting him. This denial, in a way, shows that the speaker feels enough love and affection for his father that he can over look such a problem as drinking.
The child’s blameless perspective reinforces the notion of unconditional love towards his father, even when their dance becomes particularly rough. In the second stanza, the speaker describes the father and son relationship, or dance, in more playful terms by saying, “We romped until the pans/ Slid from the kitchen shelf.” The use of the word romp, which more commonly means frolic or prance, characterizes their movement around the room as horseplay or a game. However, the speaker does say that their movement makes the pans slide from the kitchen shelf.
To make pans fall from a shelf, both must have moved quickly, heavily and violently into the shelf. Even for horseplay, both actions seem particularly rough. The speaker, in this case, possesses an innocent and loving perspective towards their somewhat rough game. Once again, the speaker does not accuse his father of hurting him, and divert emotion by lessening its severity.
The fact that the speaker avoids accusing the father further suggests that he will love his father despite his actions and mistakes. In the third stanza, the speaker, through personification, distances the blame from his father by stating, “At every step you missed/ My right ear scraped a buckle.” The speaker continues to reinforce the idea of the father and son sharing a dance. The reference to dancing comes through the father’s missing a step, conveying the father’s clumsiness and lack of gracefulness.
The image, also, places the father in a state of imbalance, suggesting that his step seems to falter numerous times. The father shows vulnerability when he misses steps, almost removing blame off of him when the buckle scratches the speaker’s ear. In fact, the speaker, places the blame on his right ear through its personification. By separating the belt from the father, Roethke separates any contact the father makes with his son through his belt or his buckle, thus lessening the action’s harshness.
The final two lines of the poem solidify that the father and son relationship remains strong, despite the questionable and rough images of imbalance presented throughout the poem. When the speaker says, “Then waltzed me off to bed/ Still clinging to your shirt,” he is showing an imbalance within the relationship between the father and the son. In this case, the father enforces his power because he waltzes the son off to bed and the son is left clinging to his shirt.
The father and son take on traditional roles of the father putting the son to bed, and the son clutching his father as he does so. However, in these lines, the use of the word “clinging” emphasizes the dependency the child feels on the father. Clinging strongly stresses the love that the speaker feels for his father. This concept of true, unadulterated love emphasizes that although the father and son may not have the most stable relationship, there still seems to be a great deal of love between them.
Although the child may love his father unconditionally he subtlety hints at his father’s hurting him. However, this is done in such a way that the reader only notices the love that exists between the two. In the line, “But I hung on like death,” the reader sees how dependent and scared the child is of his father. The word “death” is very powerful, especially in this context because it means that the child had to cling to his father. The word, alone, means an end to life and is often viewed negatively. However, Roethke cuts this tension by immediately following that phrase with, “such waltzing was not easy.”
In the reader’s mind, the dark, scary image is dulled by the beautiful image of sharing a dance with one’s father. Roethke’s decision to downplay the harsh image shows that although the child may fear his father, he will always love him, because he isn’t always this harsh. The harsh images, followed by the more pleasant images continue throughout the poem. For instance, in the last stanza, Roethke writes, “You beat time on my head/ With a palm caked hard by dirt,/ Then waltzed me off to bed/ Still clinging to you shirt.”
The repetition of the harsh images of imbalance, specifically this one in which the son is forced to cling to his father after being beat over the head, followed by an image that is more pleasant has a profound effect on the reader, as well as the son. He knows that at times his father may be harsh with him and it may cause him to fall apart emotionally and physically, but in the end, his father will always do fatherly things, such as “waltz(ing) (him) off to bed.”
Roethke highlights the moments of tenderness and makes the bond that exists between the father and the son to come off as strong and ultimately caring. Through the images of imbalance in “My Papa’s Waltz” the reader can see the father use his power negatively in his relationship with his child, yet the child still always shows love towards his parent. The reader also sees that, at times the child will show weakness and be forced to cling to his shirt, thus reinforcing the idea that the child still loves and trusts his father. It’s a prime example of the unconditional love a child feels for his child.
