Deconstruction

My Papa's Waltz

By:Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;

My mother’s countenance

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist

Was battered on one knuckle;

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head

With a palm caked hard by dirt,

Then waltzed me off to bed

Still clinging to your shirt

Starting to deconstruct this poem, the first thing that I feel I need to express is the fact of the title. Regarding the waltz, a graceful and beautiful dance. Relating it to a drunken battle between a father and child adds a certain edge and impact to the poem. Through this poem, it is inherihant that men are aggressive. This stereotype of men being a drunk and violent is very apparent. There is a distinction between man vs child and man vs wife in this poem. Man always ends up on top, and in control. This distinction is seen throughout society. By reversing the opposition, one could say that without having background knowledge of the waltz, this drunken play of events would not have been described the same. Without women being known as submissive and weak in society, the man would not have been the violent typical drunk man. A violent drunken father cannot exist with out a peaceful sober one. I realize now, that maybe I did not pick the best poem to deconstruct but I feel like I made some progress on the understanding of deconstrution.