The Ambiguous Tone of Roethke's "my Papa's Waltz"

The Ambiguous Tone of Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz"

Ambiguity is an element that poets often use. Ambiguity makes a poem assertive and weak at the same time, but shows the power of the poet to create a masterpiece. Because ambiguity makes people think, it creates an important element in the advent of poetry. It enables different interpretations, and different motivations. Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz", for example, is a poem with ambiguity. The poem's tone has been interpreted as positive, negative and ambiguous by various critics who have conflicting perspectives and interpretations. Because of the unspecified persona, as well as the use of word, the poem's ambiguity catered to all forms of interpretation. And because it lacks complexity as well as length, which is Roethke's trademark in his poem, it has become one of the most academically analyzed and interpreted poem in his collection.

John McKenna analyzes the poem in the manner of its simplicity and length. Because of its ambiguity, he concludes that it is neither positive nor negative. The changes or the revisions made for the poem is also manifested in McKenna's interpretation. Stanza by stanza he aptly analyzes the revisions created by Roethke. "Quite remarkably, then, Roethke tried, through careful revisions, to balance negative and positive tones in "My Papa's Waltz." The result is a poem rich in ambiguity that speaks eloquently to a wide audience. Readers of this poem often hold quite contradictory interpretations of it, depending on what personal experience they filter it through. The poet's revisions suggest that the poem need not be read exclusively as a positive or a negative portrait of this family moment" (McKenna). When McKenna analyzed the revision and tone of the poem, he included the importance of the revision of "Papa" from the more formal "Father". In McKenna, he analyzed that the word "papa" would be more appropriate for the affection of a young child - who is the main persona of the poem. The significance of the revision makes McKenna's analysis more technical in respect to giving the poem meaning. The texture of the emotionally complex poem suggests that the revisions made by Roethke is an implied meaning that the poem hold more weight than its simplistic and unspecific as well as ambiguous tone.

Bobby Fong suggested a different analysis. The critics have interpreted the poem differently because of the tone of the poem: positive, negative and clever balance of the two. Fong argues that the complexity of the poem lies in the imagery that the stanzas create upon the reader. "The waltz is at once a 'happy and terrifying activity' that, biographically, reflects 'Roethke's vacillation toward his father, registering playful but poignant tones in stanzas of iambic trimester" (Fong). For Fong, the relation of Roethke's biography in respect to the poem is a good element in analyzing it for its meaning.