Violence and Play
This poem gains its momentum from the ambiguous relationship between rowdy playfulness and violent brutality. By portraying a scene in which a father and son dance in an unruly manner, Roethke simultaneously hints at the joy of unregulated, physical play and the violence of unregulated, physical abuse. He suggests that the two are similar in many ways, both requiring a certain loss of control and sensory overload. The difference, in fact, is not so much which specific actions occur. Rather, the tone and intent of the actions, and the extent to which the people involved can trust one another, determines where a given interaction falls on the spectrum of violence and play.
Masculinity and Gender
Theodore Roethke repeatedly drops hints that the father in "My Papa's Waltz" is abusing or hurting his son. However, each of these signifiers of abuse can double as a signifier of masculine identity, particularly within a twentieth-century American milieu in which Roethke lived and wrote. Associated with the father are images of whiskey, an injured hand, and rowdiness under the eye of a disapproving wife or female figure. These are all generally associated with a rustic or working-class ideal of manliness. At the same time, they suggest alcoholism, violence, and abuse. Roethke, therefore, suggests that social expectations of masculinity are built around the expectation and normalization of male violence.
Parent-Child Relationships
Regardless of whether we interpret the father as an abusive or benevolent figure, it's clear that he holds a great deal of power over his child, partly just because of the difference in physical strength between a grown man and a small boy. By drawing our attention to this fact and making it seem newly striking, Roethke suggests that all parent-child relationships carry an intrinsic potential for abuse and mistreatment. Indeed, he hints, even the most innocent and friendly intergenerational interactions contain a sinister tint, because they have the capacity to become abusive. At the same time, it is the child who grows up and, as in the case of this poem's speaker, is able to contextualize and frame their parents' legacy, obtaining a different type of power.
