innocence vs. maturity

In their poems, My Papa’s Waltz and Bored, authors Theodore Roethke and Margaret Atwood take an inward look at childhood innocence and naivety. Although their work may initially seem childish and juvenile, their use of the first person narrative makes it possible to combine an uncanny description of past events with a new found understanding of their value or importance. Hence, because each author has the benefit of hindsight, readers are more readily able to detect inconsistencies in characters and changes in emotion as an effect of the author/narrator’s maturation. This, inevitably, makes it easier to detect much broader themes.

For example, despite the innocence of its title, Theodore Roethke’s poem, My Papa’s Waltz, delves confidently into themes of alcoholism, abuse, and familial dysfunction. Even though the story, as told through the eyes of a young boy, may be presented in the rhythm of a waltz (1,2,3…1,2,3) and use imagery that inevitably creates the picture of a young boy dancing playfully in circles while standing on the tops of his father’s feet, many of the words chosen to represent such liveliness also create an air of discontent. Words like death, beat, scraped, romped, and clinging all seem to have negative connotations that do not necessarily follow with the light hearted nature of the initial story. Thus, where we once saw a child playing cheerfully with his father, there is now an unsettling scene in which that same child is being abused. Nonetheless, the dual nature of this story seems to highlight the naivety of children. While we, as readers, are able to infer a certain degree of apprehension in the author/narrator’s voice, the child, from whose point of view the story is being told, is entirely oblivious to the nature of his father’s actions.

Similarly, Margaret Atwood’s character in Bored is incapable of discerning the significance of her self-proclaimed “boredom”. This boredom, which she explains as “looking, looking hard and up close at the small details”, is not necessarily boredom, but rather a lack of appreciation (line 12-14). Although she may have had little interest in sawing wood or planting a garden and, at the time, found the “myopia” more enthralling than her father’s mundane lectures on nature, her ignorance affected her in more ways than were intrinsically visible. In the final five lines of the poem the author/narrator relents that “perhaps though boredom is happier” and that “Now I wouldn’t be bored. Now I wouldn’t know too much. Now I wouldn’t know” (lines 35-39). However, at this point, the author/narrator seems to be far more aware of her “boredom”. Here where, as readers, we have the benefit of knowing that Atwood is writing this poem as reflection concerning her father’s death, we are able to discern a certain degree of remorse. Although, when she was younger, she may have taken for granted all the time she spent with her father, she now realizes that she would rather be “bored”. If she could live all over again she would take greater care in appreciating the value of such moments and be less concerned with the minute details.

Nonetheless, by incorporating a sense of catharsis into their poems both Roethke and Atwood successfully show the variation between childhood and adulthood. And while it is difficult to say whether or not the innocence and naivety we experience as children is necessarily bad, there is inevitably a certain degree to be said about the benefits of maturity.