The modern society has become a victim of compulsive drunkenness. The evil has become so much a part in modern families that even the children in the family have come to accept it and live with it.
The poet has narrated this poem as a small boy who is giving the account of a dance with his drunken father. Even though the poem speaks the cheerfulness of the child who is enjoying the waltz with his father, there is a sardonic tone to it.
The child who began the dance with his father found the whisky smell on his father’s breath unbearable. Besides, the dance was rough and it wasn’t easy to carry on with so much jumping and tapping.
In spite of all this, the child still was determined to continue the waltz. “hung on like death” clearly suggests that the child was haunted and doesn’t remember the dance with joy and cheer. The father was powerful and his rough dance was a symbolic to using his power on his son.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The noisiness and roughness of their dance has been depicted by the falling of pans in the kitchen. This made the child’s mother angry. Mother was so habituated with drunk and staggering state of the father that she continued her kitchen work without being perturbed by the rough play of the dance. Poet has also tried to indicate that the child might have come to the rescue of his father if the mother had tried to fight over with him.
The father was heavily drunk and also his hands were dirty and muddy which suggests that he was a farmer or had fallen in this state on ground. The child bears the tight hold of his hand hurt in one finger by his father who is in an inebriated state.
This depicts that even the child has learned to endure his father’s drunken state like his mother. Families get habituated with the rough and insensitive behavior of the fathers who are habitual drinkers. Any unjust behavior becomes a routine. The hurting of the boy’s right ear when the drunken father tumbles over him is another proof of father’s state of drunken dizziness. There is a quite a clarity in the resentment that the family feels but fails to show.
The roughness of the drunken father has more to show. The dance was so rough that the music beat seemed like a physical beating. Also the battered knuckles of the dirty and muddy father hurt the child badly. As the dance winds up, the father is taking the boy to bed. The boy still is clinging on it his father’s shirt which means that even though he doesn’t find the dance a pleasant experience, still he loves his father and keeps close to him.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
It reflects the reluctance of a child to let his father be snatched away from him by death. Towards the end, the memories turn out melancholy and it looks like the child is fondly remembering his father in spite of the fact that he was drunk and danced rough with him