My Papa's Waltz

      When first reading My Papa’s Waltz one could think this was just a father swinging and dancing around with their child, but after further review it looks at different than that.  My group in class was chosen to analyze this poem and we all said the same thing, a drunken dad swinging his kid around.  We actually all re-read it several times, each time we would find something new that we didn’t notice.  Obviously the first line, “The whisky on your breath could make a small boy dizzy.”(lines 1-2) is a dead giveaway that this father has just returned from the bar and is drunk.  The next set of line is where we started to debate, my opinion was that the father was drunk and dame home and thought it would be fun to swing his child around, while others thought the father was angry and possibly abusing the child.

     “We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf; my mothers countenance could not unfrown itself.”(lines 5-8)  Some saw this as an awful scene, they imagined “romped” as a play on words meaning something completely different from dancing, possibly once again abusing the child throwing him/her around the kitchen as mom watched in sadness and disapproval.  I took the more optimistic view, I believe the father was just so drunk that he was dancing and moving around with his child and knocking things all over the place.  The mother, well she just didn’t approve of what old drunk dad was doing, I think she was more annoyed with him than anything.

     The next stanza was more of the same, dad is stumbling around trying to dance and every miss step he takes causes the child’s ear to scrape on his belt buckle.  There was no debate here we all agreed that dad couldn’t walk straight and he was either dragging the child with him or dancing through the house.

     The final stanza had more debatable lines in it.  “You beat time on my head” (line 13) some believed he was actually abusing this child, actually slapping them on the head, but I disagree.  I really do believe the father was still just dancing around tapping the child on the head as they moved.  I can actually remember my dad tapping me on the head to music while sitting on his lap as a child, so I thought nothing of this line.  He then put the child to bed, “still clinging to your shirt”, was the child holding on out of terror or did they just not want the fun to end. I believe it was the latter.

     Maybe I am naïve but don’t see this as a negative situation.  Yes it might be a little crazy and it wouldn’t be as bad if dad wasn’t drunk, but I think it’s all just good old-fashioned fun.  My father always did goofy and fun things like this with me, and while he wasn’t drunk I still think it is a comparable situation.  I don’t think the father being drunk is the main idea in this poem; I think it’s the fun memory that is being portrayed.