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My Papa Waltz

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What if you had to have a father who reeked of alcohol and had problems with him. This poem My Papa waltz is about the writer remembering what his father was like when he was a kid and compares what he had done to the waltz he was having. My Papa Waltz is probably one of the best poem’s written by Theodore Reothke. The poem may seem like it’s been written just like any other poem, but this poem is a lot deeper than you may think. Within the poem there are is a numerous number of themes which is, dominance of father figure , alcohol because of the father drinking and, getting to spend time with his dad . Also, there are many symbols as well which include the father is a drunkard to him clinging to the shirt of his father as he dances and the …show more content…

His father is a big alcohol because the poem starts off as “the whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy” (1,2). This also leads into the fact that his father is an alcoholic because the breath reeks of whiskey and at the end of that stanza there is an indication of his father breath making it hard to stand up and waltz and follow his foot movements because it smelled so bad. But I hung on like death such waltzing was not easy”.(3,4) This line also indicates that the waltzing dance wasn’t so easy to do. The last theme about quality time with his father is big because if he doesn’t help him with the dance then he really wouldn’t know another way to express his love to his son so making him waltz around the house is the best way he thought they could do it. The a main symbol in this story is the waltz dance that they perform because It displays the control the father had over his son by making him learn that the dance and by his not liking how the father is acting towards him “ My mother’s countenance could not unfrown itself”(3,4). States she’s not happy and frowns because the husband was drunk as he arrived home. The father was waltzing as he had consumed so much alcohol that each step he took he stumbled and his buckle on his belt would hit him in the right ear “ at every step you missed my right ear scraped a

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