The poem "My Papa's Waltz  by Theodore Roethke is a piece that presents itself with a pile of interpretations. One of the most often noted interpretations of this poem is the idea of the waltz serving as a metaphor for abuse between a parent and child. The reader is presented with a disturbing remembrance of the narrator's physical child abuse and the negative word choice and imagery throughout the piece. However, in contrast to this notion it can be assumed that this poem offers more than negative connotations. At the time the poem was written, the waltz was a familiar dance in society. The dance is famously known for its "rise and fall  action, which Roethke portrays in each stanza of the poem. Many readers of the first stanza jump to the conclusion that the father and son are locked in some sort of dark dance of death and the boy is in danger. Certainly, the father and son are not waltzing but in a conventional sense they are horse playing. The rhythmic romp can be felt in the poet's iambic trimetric quatrains. The author uses irony in the first stanza in the internal rhyme scheme of ABAB. "The whiskey on your breath “ But I hung on like death  (1-3) Breath and death rhyme which is ironic because breath is symbolic to life. The author uses simile (like death) to describe how the child clung on to his father as he arrived home from work. The stanza often infers that the father coming with whiskey on his breath means that he was highly intoxicated. One reader may see the father coming home intoxicated as a negative picture, however, coming home somewhat intoxicated was actually a factor of the working class culture and meant that one had a long hard day and deserved a drink. In the first stanza the whiskey on the father's breath does not necessarily portray him as a stumbling drunk. Many people are capable of drinking alcohol in the evening without becoming highly intoxicated. Also, the boy "hung on like death  (3) not