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Throughout the poem, “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, many techniques are used to show that there are furious conflicts between a father and his son. Roethke uses the word waltz in the title to relate to the beating of the son. I belie ....

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... negative ideas in the poem, the next is when Roethke states, “At every step you missed / My right ear scraped a buckle” (11-12). This in fact shows that the little boy is being drug around by the drunken father. In this particular instance the boy is being hauled around, but the author compares it to a dance when you would “miss a step” and stumble. Roethke then states, “You beat time on my head”, as if he were keeping time for a dance or a rhythm on the boys head (13). This all enlarges the negativity and sadness of the poem. The small boy also states, “But I hung on like death” (3). This proves that the boy was thinking about death, ...