Analysis Of Theodore Roethke s My Papa s Waltz Essay -- Poetry, Stanza

He tries to beautify the experience by making it a waltz. He also, by means of images and rhythm, shows the conflict between the readers, or the way any other ‘normal’ man will look at this experience, and how he sees it, or wants it to be seen ( although he does not show his father as completely innocent). It can also be looked upon as the Petty Herst syndrome – meaning having a ‘reality’ so intense and strong that one feels incapable of any other ‘reality’, fearing it can and will be worse. The poem is built of four stanzas (quatrain), each consisting of four lines. The rhyme scheme is, in the first stanza – abab, in the second – cdcd, in the third – efef, and in the fourth – ghgh. The meter is trecet iamb (stressed unstressed – three times per line). The central image in the poem is the metaphor in which the beatings are described as a waltz. The poet is led around the house, dancing – not beaten around. Which is also brought throu by the meter – trecet iamb – the beat of the waltz, thus the main image is shown through the meter as well, giving the reader more of the feeling of a dance in contrast to the ‘secondery images’ which are more associated with the rough experience of a beating. Given such parameters the poet installs some sort of relaxation in the reader (maybe even in himself), in order to make the subject – the beating – more readable, and lessening the effect of thewhen the person leaves this reality it will still, in retrospective, be the best situation he was ever been. It is possible that the narrator in this poem is ‘afflicted’ by this syndrome. He defends his father because to him it seems that this is the reality he should be in. He describes the beat ings as a waltz because he sees it as such. Although the poem is narrated retrospectively, from a grown up man point of view, something remains, the poet does not hate his father for the beating, on the contrary, he shows us that the love to his father is not, and never was lost. And twice during the poem – he talks about † But I hung on † in the first stanza, and † Still clinging to your shirt.† in the fourth stanza, which gives the feeling that he loved and stayed with his father during his childhood, and that he does that even now when his childhood is no longer with him.