“Perfect families” do not exist. Tensions always seem to fit their way through the cracks in family bonds, often creating conflict in relationships. However, despite the numerous strains that accompany familial life, many families have a binding love that can never break. To demonstrate complex family dynamics, the poems “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke and “The Portrait” by Stanley Kunitz both utilize form, diction, and imagery.
The form of “My Papa’s Waltz” exposes the tension among the subject family. Roethke exploits rhyme scheme to make the poem almost lyrical, which places emphasis on the father’s and the son’s waltz. The diction employed to describe the waltz insinuates both violence and love. Phrases and words such as “hung on like death”, “romped”, “battered”, and “beat” all indicate a fearful relationship; however, the last phrase of “still clinging to your shirt” indicates that the son loves the father dearly, or else he would’ve let go of him the…show more content… Kunitz exhibits the tension between the mother and the son through alliteration. The alliteration presents the mother as a violent figure, as she “never forgave [the son’s] father” for killing himself, and after the son brought a portrait of the father down, we could see image that “she ripped it into shreds without a single word and slapped [him] hard.” This really upset the son, as Kunitz’s utilization of diction contrastingly revealed the son’s feelings of endearment towards his father. He saw his father “with a brave mustache and deep brown level eyes”, which shows that he didn’t think of his father’s death as cowardly, and thought of him as a warm and steady person despite his chilling and unstable acts. Unlike “My Papa’s Waltz”, “The Portrait” displays severely contrasting views of the father from the mother and son, which is the cause of their family’s
