In Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" and Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays", the protagonists each have a troubled relationship with his father.

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(T.A.: Shannon Macrae)

Rochelle Manguino

Dr. Chris Koenig-Woodyard

English 110Y5Y: Narrative

22 June 2004

A Look into Relationships with Fathers:

A Comparison of "My Papa's Waltz" and "Those Winter Sundays"

Literature offers insight into human relationships. Poems, in particular, may uncover deep and often unresolved struggles that one may have with a loved one. In Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" and Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays", the protagonists each have a troubled relationship with his father. It is evident that there is a central conflict between father and son, despite a genuine love for the former, which ultimately leads to an ironic response from the son.

Both narrators in "My Papa's Waltz" and "Those Winter Sundays" appear to have a conflict with their father. This can be seen in "My Papa's Waltz" in that the narrator must cope with an apparent drunken father: "The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy"; (1-2). And when they waltz together, it is tragic, too, that the son must pay for his father's mistakes: "At every step you missed / My right ear scraped a buckle." (Roethke 11-12). The title of the poem itself in using the word "My" in "My Papa's Waltz" rather than "Our" symbolizes his father being intoxicated, in that the waltz is actually his own drunken walk. The apparent agon is developed in to more than just a psychological struggle, in to what appears to be physical abuse: "The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle" (Roethke 9-10). Breaking this statement in to two parts and with no further explanation as to why the father's knuckle is battered, it implies that not only does he hit his loved ones, he moreover shows no love; The father should be holding his son's hand when they dance, yet he holds his wrist as if to say 'let go of me'. Having a troubled father is evident as well in the eyes of the narrator of "Those Winter Sundays," when after working hard all week, his father comes home to an ungrateful family:
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Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

blanked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. (Hayden 1-5)

There appears to be a conflict between members of the household, further illustrated by the statement which reveals there are "chronic angers of that house." (Hayden 9). However, it is important to note that the narrator himself never once shows ingratitude for his father's hard work - he refers to the tension of ...

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