The Unhealthy Relationship in My Papa's Waltz

There are many words used to hint that the relationship described in the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke’s is a very negative and unhealthy relationship. From reading the poem I believe that the relationship is between an abusive father and a son. The poem describes the father as an angry alcoholic who beats his son. In the first stanza Roethke’s uses words such as whiskey, dizzy and death to create a negative atmosphere. Roethke’s wrote “But I hung on like death” in the third line of the first stanza. The dramatic sentence implies that the boy was hanging on death meaning that the father was doing something to harm the son. In the second stanza Roethke goes on to describe the beating taking place by saying “We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf.” The sentence is describing the father and son fighting in the kitchen while everything is crashing around them. The second stanza also goes on to explain that the mother is always frowning due to the fact that her husband hits her son. The sentence “My mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself” means that the mother’s facial expression was always frowning. In the third stanza the author hints towards the relationship being an abusive relationship between a father and son by talking about how his father is holding his son’s wrist with bruised hands as a result of the son fighting back against his father’s abuse. The author also talks about the abusive relationship in the fourth stanza by saying, “You beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt.” To me the sentence means that his father beat him through his childhood years. The poem “My Papa’s Waltz” discusses the abusive relationship between a father and son.