Theodore Roethke's The Lost Son

In Nick Flynn’s memoir, Another Bullshit Night In Suck City, the narrator, Nick, and his father, Jonathan have developed a negligent relationship among each other. Nick has many encounters with his father, where he could have approached him in order to reconnect the father son bond but he does not. However, Nick does feel that not only is his father lost but he is as well. “Some part of me knew he would show up, that if I stood in one place long enough he would find me, like you’re taught to do when you are lost. But they never taught us what to do if both of you are lost, and both of you end up in the same place, waiting.” (Flynn 24) Nick chose to remain focused on how his father was not there for him growing up, and not take advantage of the times that he was right in front of him.

“Father! Father! Wake up. They’re going to throw you outside… No! I yelled. He’s not dead! Not yet!...” Elie said as the desperation crept throughout his voice as he hoped his father would open his eyes and continuing to give him the strength to live. The theme family is carried out through the story Night. Family is essential when going through an extremely dark, depressing, lonely period of time, like the Wiesel's did. Elie and his father experienced things that are unimaginable and couldn’t have made it as far as they did without each other. Throughout the book Night the author Elie Wiesel is trying to accomplish the goal of making people understand that there will be difficulty throughout life and family will be there to make the hard times easier. Elie uses imagery, symbolism, and flashbacks to explain the importance of family after his tragic trauma.

“You remember what you want to forget and you forget what you want to remember,” (McCarthy 12). With most aspects of life, the horrendous moments are the times that no one can erase. This applied to The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Towards the end of the novel when the son loses his father proves to be the most indelible moment with the assistance of the feelings experienced during that part. The son encounters a variety of emotions including loneliness, loss and hope. In enduring these complex emotions, this section was the most remarkable part.

The poem “A Story” by Li-Young Lee depicts the complex relationship between a boy and his father when the boy asks his father for a story and he can’t come up with one. When you’re a parent your main focus is to make your child happy and to meet all the expectations your child meets. When you come to realize a certain expectation can’t satisfy the person you love your reaction should automatically be to question what would happen if you never end up satisfying them. When the father does this he realizes the outcome isn’t what he’d hope for. He then finally realizes that he still has time to meet that expectation and he isn’t being rushed. Through shifting points of view, a purposeful structure, and settle choices in diction the author adds

There is no comparison to the amount of pain a parent endures when they outlive their child. A tale of woe is what resides after such incident. An endless cycle of grief is exemplified in the short story “Night” by Bret Lott. The way the father in the story pays meticulous attention to detail makes the audience believe that he does not want to forget the existence of his child. He is merely in denial. The denial is being caused by auditory hallucinations, and Lott describes those incidents with descriptive words that correlate to the father’s emotions.

In the poem “forgiving my father”, Lucille Clifton writes of a young daughter reminiscing about her father’s recent death. The daughter talks about it being Friday, it being payday. She discusses her father and how he owed her and her dead mother money when really they just wanted him to be present. The daughter feels she has had no time with her father and she resents him for it. He was not present in her life and now he has passed away, leaving her with a yearning for something that she will never obtain. It is apparent that she feels negatively toward her father; although, she loves him still after being a horrible father to her. When she calls him daddy she begins to hint at the love and endearment she still holds for him. The words payday and bill shape the poem to be about money; however, when reading more thoroughly it is actually about time.

Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” are similar because they focus on the same subject. However, they differ in how the speakers’ feel about their relationship with their parent(s). In Plath’s “Daddy”, the speaker is a daughter thinking about how her father treated her. She tells about how she felt trapped by him and how she tried to ‘kill’ him, line 6 of the poem, but he dies before she has a chance. The ending of Plath’s poem implies that she got married to a man like her father. In Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”, the speaker seems to be an adult reminiscing his childhood through a metaphor of a dance. The poem suggests that the boy was abused and the mother stood by without doing much about it. Three topics that

In the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz”, Theodore Roethke illustrates the complex relationship between a little boy and his father by juxtaposing images of love and violence through word choices that portray feelings of fear yet affection for his father. Roethke’s shifting tone encompasses distress and a sense admiration that suggests the complexities of violence both physically and emotionally for the undercurrents of his father and son relationship.

Judy Fong-Bates short story “The Gold Mountain Coat” and Susan Young’s poem “Wordsmith” portray a strained relationship between a father and his children. Both the fathers are distant from their children but while the father in “Wordsmith” makes sincere efforts to bond with his daughter, Sam sing from “The Gold Mountain coat” chooses to remain strict and unapproachable towards his two sons.

Throughout “My Papa’s Waltz” and “Those Winter Sundays”, the author’s reflect on how their fathers were hard workers, although each memory is emotionally different. In “My Papa’s Waltz”, Roethke remembers his father coming home from work and his hands “Was battered on one knuckle” (Line 10). Even though the father had a long day at work, the boy recounts him coming home and dancing with him. Whereas “Those Winter Sundays”, Hayden recalls his fathers hard work by describing his “Cracked hands that ached/ From labor in the weekday…” (Line 3;4). The author suggests his father

Everyone has a father, whether their relationship with him is good or bad. Webster’s Dictionary defines the word father as follows: a man in relation to his natural child or children. “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke and “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden are two poems with themes set around a father. These poems deal with accounts of the poets’ fathers as they reminisce about certain scenes from their childhood. “My Papa’s Waltz” and “Those Winter Sundays” show similarities and differences in structure, literary elements, and central idea.

Stories are the foundation of relationships. They represent the shared lessons, the memories, and the feelings between people. But often times, those stories are mistakenly left unspoken; often times, the weight of the impending future mutes the stories, and what remains is nothing more than self-destructive questions and emotions that “add up to silence” (Lee. 23). In “A Story” by Li-Young Lee, Lee uses economic imagery of the transient present and the inevitable and fear-igniting future, a third person omniscient point of view that shifts between the father’s and son’s perspective and between the present and future, and emotional diction to depict the undying love between a father and a son shadowed by the fear of change and to illuminate the damage caused by silence and the differences between childhood and adulthood perception.

At that moment, he heard the door. Not the doorbell but a series of soft, polite raps, almost apologetic about the late hour. Every house has a logic, and its laws are more eloquent at night, when things occur without palliative noises. He didn’t look at his watch or jump, or suspect that he was hearing things. He simply got up from his chair and walked toward the door without turning on any lights; when he found himself standing face-to-face with his father. He had not seen his father since his death. And, at that moment, he had the strange realization that he had become used to the idea of never seeing him again.

In the poem, My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke, is known to be a controversial story about a father and son relationship. The speaker in this poem has contradicting emotions about his father and the tone told throughout the story can be ribald yet many readers find it all just a happy memory. The main subject of My Papa’s Waltz is a young son who loved his son but still feared him. In this poem the speaker will illustrate the family views using a certain word choice and the tone he uses. The specific diction will highlight the real truth between the father and son relationship and what it means.

According to traditional gender roles, the father is the provider for the family. He is