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Roethkes Use of Tone

in the third stanza. "This love dance, a kind of blood rite between father and son, shows suppressed terror combined with awe-inspired dependency" (Balakian 62). "The hand that held my wrist/was battered on one knuckle;/ At every step you missed/ My right ear scraped a buckle"(Roethke 668). The speaker's father's hand being "battered on one knuckle" is indicative of a man who works hard with his hands. This stanza suggests that Papa probably earned a modest living and might have drunk on a regular basis to escape from reality. This stanza also provides the reader with the feeling of how aggressive this dance may be. Roethke is apparently referring to his father's belt buckle in the last line of the third stanza. During an aggressive act such as this, a small child would experience pain from such a man's belt buckle "scraping" across his ear in this fashion, yet the child refrains from any type of resistance. Perhaps this is caused by the child's fear that his father will become angry, so the child simply endures the pain and tries to enjoy the moment, for he may also feel love and attention that he may not receive regularly from his father.John J. McKenna offers us further suggestions about the feelings suggested in this poem. In McKenna's article, two of the holograph manuscripts to "My Papa's Waltz" are discussed. McKenna implies that the changes made between these manuscripts are further evidence that this poem shows mixed emotions through the tone that Roethke utilizes. These holograph manuscripts are labeled "MS-A" and "MS-B" at the University of Washington where they are contained in the archives.The first of these changes discussed in McKenna's article is the gender of the child in the poem. He discusses how Roethke seemed to argue with himself about what the sex of the child should be, but finally chooses male for a few different reasons. "It seems plausible that he did recognize the rough-house nature of this workin...

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