children

“My Papa’s Waltz,” “Bored,” and “The Video” are all stories about each speakers’ childhood relationships with their fathers. Each of them had some sort of problem with their father when they were young. Some fathers didn’t pay them enough attention; one gave almost too much. Their themes are quite different, though vaguely related. In a nutshell, they are all regretting something, but not necessarily the same thing. Two of the children are feeling neglected, while one is more disappointed. I excluded “Fern Hill” in my analysis because the language was too difficult for me to understand.

In “My Papa’s Waltz,” the speaker seems to be reminiscing about a childhood occurrence. From the title and the first line, we can assume that he didn’t really get along with his father. The first thing the reader learns about his father is that he drank. He uses the phrase “like death” to describe how he clung to his father as they waltzed around the kitchen. This and the last line “still clinging to your shirt” made me wonder if perhaps he was remembering this experience after his father had died, as if he was almost dreaming it. The form of the poem seems ironic to me because it is very flowing, almost like a waltz, yet according to the speaker, they were more romping than waltzing, and the tone to me is dreary and almost menacing.

The speaker of “Bored” never actually tells us that she is talking about her father. However, it can be assumed from the tasks that the man has her do. The first part of the poem is very bitter towards her father, as if he made her do all these things that she couldn’t stand doing. However, the tone changes on line 20, after the first period at the end of a line. She then realizes that it was quality time spent with him. She learned a lot about him, and those are the classic “dad things” that she remembers about him. The last 3 lines point out this realization “Now I wouldn’t be bored…” It seems her father has died and she misses those days being “bored” with him.

“The Video” is a little unlike the previous 2 poems. This speaker is more bitter towards her entire family than particularly her dad. However, the one line that includes her dad is one which he tells her to “Move over a bit,” because a new child is entering the family. She also complains that her mother was “twice as busy” now that she had a new child, so she rewinds the home-video of her sister being born, in order to almost erase her sister. The reader can imply that her parents pay less attention to her now that there is another child, and she is not happy with her parents because of it.