Sara's "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke

In this poem, the little boy is describing him dancing with his father. He talks about his father being drunk and dirty. He goes on to talk about how his mother would stand and look at them disapprovingly but they didn’t care. I say they didn’t care because they continued to waltz. Throughout the poem the father and son are waltzing to the point the father is taking the boy to bed.

Looking into the deeper meaning of this poem, you could say that the boy was describing how rough and careless his father was but he seemed to enjoy it. There are many words and actions with a negative connotation but the boy the boy sounds as if he enjoys them. For example:

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death..

This says that his father was so drunk that you could smell it on his breath and it would make you dizzy but he still holds on to his father. This poem you could also say was meant to be kind of humorous because the boy describes the man drunk, dirty, and careless but the boy likes it in a strange way.

(By Sara; received 11:07 a.m.)