Family Unit Explored in "Papa's Waltz" Family life is a complicated thing and while Hollywood might want us to think the family is a happy, cohesive unit, life proves it wrong. Reflecting life and its wide array of unexpected and unforeseen incidents, family life is a combination of the best and worst that life offers. Family life, at best, is bittersweet and "My Papa's Waltz," by Theodore Roethke demonstrates this point perfectly. Told from a child's point-of-view, the poem touches on how fear and love can exist at the same time.

The various elements of the family unit emerge in this poem. The tone of the poem reveals the speaker's mixed emotions toward his father. Through sensory descriptions, he allows readers to experience those emotions. For example, he smells whiskey on his father's breath, while still hanging onto him "like death" (Roethke 3). This is frightening...

He recounts the incident as a "romp" (5). This word choice allows readers to see the speaker using images from childhood to enhance the mood of the poem. Romp is something we think of when we think of children playing carefree. While the speaker and his father are not "playing" in the typical sense, we get the notion that this kind of playing is what the speaker grows accustomed to over the years. The waltz is not rough but the speaker notices his father's "battered knuckle" (10) and "palm caked hard by dirt" (14). These images symbolize the father's hard life and they help ground readers with what is actually going on in the poem. This is not playtime for the speaker and he might even have moments of terror as his father swings him around the room. However, above all else, the speaker knows he is with his…