poem analysis of my papa's waltz. i received it today and i realised i got it TOTALLY wrong. ms choo just put there "please read again".

My Papa's Waltz
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Ms choo insisted on her point that is was child abuse. I know it does seem so, it has many points. like "the hand that held my wrist" WRIST. why wrist? deliberately to be painful, because grabbing the wrist is more painful than the hand, or was he just too drunk to realise.

She said under any circumstance, a father would not allow his child to get hurt no matter how drunk he was. He must be insane "at every step you missed my right ear scraped a buckle", to let his child go through such hurt.

I beg to differ. Why then, did he "hung on like death"? And this poem describes it as such a regular thing, his father coming home drunk. if it has been so regular, most normal people would find a way to escape from the pain. but why didn't he? why did he insist on clinging on like death. and when he was "waltzed off to bed" he was still "clinging on" to his father's "shirt". why not let go and run to the bed since his father is already sending him to bed. why still cling on? obviously it isn't child abuse! he also said "such waltzing was not easy", then why do you still "waltz" with him till the end and refuse to let go?

Ms choo said that waltz is used as a euphemism. nonononono, i don't think so.

Question (c) was how does the author make us sympathize with the personna. She said that the unbelievable thing was that the author did not express any sense of hatred towards his father. Which made it so saddening. Either he did not know it was child abuse or he was resigned to it.

So in the end i just gave up and realised that my analysis was lousy. It is true that he used very violent words "romped", "scraped" "battered" and etc.

so oh well. i just hope i don't get the whole thing wrong in tomorrow's Lang Arts test. finally studying for bio! I'm HAPPPYYYYYYYYYY!