The scene portrays a pleasant memory of a father and son roughhousing before the boy's bedtime. ... The title of the poem reveals Roethke's intention to show the boy's love for his father by using the comfortable word papa instead of the formal father. ... The imageries of the poem are seen throughout their playful moment in the kitchen, the mother's face, and the waltz to the bedroom. ... They are messing up the mother's kitchen in a playful way with the pan falling on the way to the bedroom, but she is not interrupting the bond of the father and son. ... In lines 12-...

• Word Count: 612
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

The poem has four quatrains in which author describes a relationship between a young boy and his father. ... The boy dancing with his father who spins him around making a mass in the kitchen which "make a small boy dizzy;" On the other hand reader can confuse dance with real meaning which is the beating of the child. ... Narrator described that a small boy was afraid of his father. ... The boy respected his father and he knew that his behavior is normal. ... He complained about his whisky breath and reckless actions "We romped until the pans slide from the kitchen shelf;" Despite of harsh puni...

• Word Count: 564
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

It is a poem portraying a rather strange moment between a young boy and his father. ... Perhaps the father is holding the boy against him, and the boy is afraid to let go. ... Then, the speaker says that he and his father "romped until the pans / slid from the kitchen shelf" (5-6). It is apparent that this activity between the boy and his father is quite boisterous. ... Maybe the boy is holding his father for both reasons. ...

• Word Count: 955
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

"The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy- (1-2): This passage leads the reader to an incorrect idea of a drunk father getting home; but the reality is that it just shows a typical farmer father drinking whiskey, which is a very common thing in cold places, and fatally will give a strong alcoholic breath for whoever drinks it, no matter how much. ... Following these thoughts the whole idea is totally confirmed when Theodore says "We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf - (5-6). ... That could explain what "At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle- (...

• Word Count: 540
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

The drunken father's breath, "Could make a small boy dizzy", yet the boy hangs "on like death" (My Papa's lines 2-3). ... The waltz with his father was so vigorous that the "pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf" (My Papa's lines 5-6), thoroughly annoying the mother who's "countenance / Could not unfrown itself" (My Papa's lines 7-8). She does not like to see her kitchen fall apart because her husband and child are bouncing around the house. ...

• Word Count: 1292
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The twentieth century really begins before the end of the nineteenth century. Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887 was felt by many to represent the end of an era. An end-of-century stoicism, and a growing pessimism among writers and intellectuals, may be traced to several sources, not least the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species which put the existence of God into radical question. Across the whole population, and in the face of rapid economic and social changes, radical doubts about the stability of the existing order were expressed. By the end of the nine...

• Word Count: 10566
• Approx Pages: 42