My Papa's Waltz

Study Guide

Literary Devices

Setting

Save

Literary Devices Setting

“My Papa’s Waltz” is set inside the speaker’s childhood home. In traditional American thinking, the home is a highly idealized place that doesn’t simply house the nuclear family, but also nurtures that family and enables its members to thrive. Evidently, however, the home in this poem is characterized by tension and violence, which reflects the instability at the heart of the speaker’s family. In the second stanza, for instance, the speaker notes how he and his father “romped until the pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf” (lines 5–6). On a literal level, the speaker implies that his father treats him so roughly that the physical impacts of their bodies reverberate up through the walls, causing pans to crash down from their shelves. On a more figurative level, we might say that the house itself “reacts” to the act of domestic abuse by falling apart. The pans are a particularly potent symbol for this collapse, since they are tools used to cook for the family. Thus, it isn’t simply that the house is falling apart; the care that’s meant to hold the family together is what’s collapsing.

Next section Themes