My Papa's Waltz

     When reading the title of Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz," one would think that it would be a pleasant or uplifting poem.  However, when glancing through the poem, words such as "dizzy," "like death," "battered," and "scraped" suggest otherwise.  Through the contrast of a waltz and a drunk father, Roethke presents a scene of tension.  The boy waltzing with his father obviously cares about his father and wants to be like him/be close to him.  Lines 15-16 show this in the way the boy clings to his father as he carries him to bed. Even though the father is drunk and unintentionally being rough with the boy, the boy still desires to waltz with his father: "But I hung on like death / Such waltzing was not easy" (lines 3-4).  The mother observes the scene and is not pleased--"My mother's countenance / Could not unfrown itself" (lines 7-8).  The mother knows that the father is being careless, possibly selfish, and a bad example to their son, yet she doesn't do anything but frown at them.  I wonder why this is.  Did the mother not want to draw any more attention to the father's drunkenness, or did she feel that she could not step in and stop the waltz out of fear?  Either way, the scene gives us a picture of a child wanting to be like his father even though the father is flawed.