My Papa's Waltz Literary Elements

First-person point of view from the perspective of a young boy or an adult looking back on his childhood.

Four quatrains written in iambic trimeter with an ABAB rhyme scheme

The speaker uses “I hung on like death” as a simile to describe his desperate clinging. It is also possible that the waltz itself is an extended metaphor referring to various types of play or even fighting, though this is ambiguous.

The "H" sounds in the phrase "The hand that held my wrist" are alliterative, while the "I" sounds in "Slid from the kitchen shelf" and the "E" sounds in "At every step you missed" are assonant. Alliterative "B" sounds throughout the poem's second half are attached to harsh or violent words and hint that abuse is taking place.

The poem functions around a central irony—the unexpected similarities or even difficulty distinguishing between abuse and kindness.

Lyric poetry

The speaker's childhood home

The poem's tone is playful and whimsical—though with enough hints at violence for this tone to appear ironic.

Protagonist: the speaker as a child. Antagonist: When interpreted as an abusive episode, the father and, to a lesser extent, the mother.

The major conflict in the poem is not between two individuals so much as it is between two viewpoints or interpretations—a nostalgic, lighthearted one and a darker, more violent one.

The poem lacks a single climactic moment: Roethke purposely keeps its mood and meter conspicuously even, at least on the surface. However, the conflict peaks in the third stanza, when hints at abuse become harder to ignore, including details like the father hitting the child's head.

“Such waltzing was not easy” foreshadows the revelation of the father's abuse.

The poem's description of the mother is an example of understatement precisely because it does not provide much context regarding the origin or degree of her disapproval:” My mother’s countenance/Could not unfrown itself.”

The poem revolves around the waltz, alluding to a popular style of ballroom dance.

The mother's face is personified, with the curious effect of depersonalizing the mother as a whole, in the phrase "My mother’s countenance/Could not unfrown itself."

The speaker's description that he “hung on like death” is hyperbolic, using the strongest language possible to describe him holding on to his father.

Roethke uses subtly onomatopoetic words to convey the aural chaos of the "waltz": "slid," "scraped," and "beat."