A Father’s Love for Their Son

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every day during the week so instead of sleeping in and getting a much deserved and earned rest he decides to get up and take care of his family. Speaking for my behalf I know sleep is something I cherish and waking up early is one of the toughest things for me to do each day. Even when I have a 10:30 class I don’t want to get out of bed and start my day. Notonly did his father wake up early but he got up and went outside in the “blueblack cold” (Hayden 2) which makes the conditions even worse. The father in “My Papa’s Waltz” sacrifices the happiness of his wife to make his son happy and have an exciting time with him. The father’s wife’s “countenance/ could not unfrown itself” (Roethke 7/ 8). I do not know about you but when I can married and if my wife is upset at something I’m doing, I would stop as soon as I figured it out so she wouldn’t be mad and I am sure that most males would agree with that statement. The father realizes that his wife is upset by her facial expression yet he continues to take that risk and waltz freely with his son.

In “Those Winter Sundays” and “My Papa’s Waltz” both poets look back on their childhood with love and respect for their fathers. Robert Hayden reflects on his father’s choices of getting up early (Hayden 1) to make “fires blaze’ (5) just so he could be warm when he got up out of bed in the morning. In the last two lines of the poem Hayden wishes he had realized what his father had done for him so he could simply go back and thank him. Hayden’s diction when he uses “offices” in line 14 can also mean to have a duty, and obligation. I thought it was a brilliant use of diction by Hayden because his father does the job of a dad perfectly throughout the poem. Theodore Roethke looks back on a night of fun filled with happy dancing and shows us how much he loved his father. Roethke “hung on like death” (Roethke 3) whenever his dad would dance with him because he was having such a fun time he didn’t want to let go. It is one of those feelings kids have when they’re at amusement parks riding thrill rides, they’re clinging on for dear life but having so much fun at the same time. Since Roethke had such an unfortunate childhood and did not have any friends really, he reminiscences about one of his favorite memories that he had with his father because his father was one of his few friends.

“Those Winter Sundays” and “My Papa’s Waltz” were both outstanding poems that showed a strong bond between a father and his son. Both poems are prime examples of relationships fathers and sons should have with one another. Both poets do an excellent job of proving this. The love and respect their parents had for both poets was not a big deal at the time but as the poets grew older they realized how much it actually meant to them.

Works Cited:

Hayden, Robert Earl. Those Winter Sundays. N.p.: n.p., 1966. Print.

Roethke, Theodore. My Papa’s Waltz. N.p.: n.p., 1942. Print.