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Attitudes and Characteristics of Fathers and Sons

Introduction

The father -son relation has a fascinating opacity that many writers and poets have tried to depict in their writings and poetry. Every writer elicits this dusky human relationship with conflicting interpretations. This paper discusses the attitudes and characteristics of fathers and sons brought out through relationships, depicted in a poem "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke, and two fictional stories “Popular Mechanics" by Raymond Carver and "Killings" by Andre Dubus.

Thesis statement

Father- son relationship is a mixture of love, seizure, delight and fear. Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz", Raymond Carver's reading “Popular Mechanics" and Andre Dubus fictional story "Killings", all these writings illustrate father's character as a blend of tenderness and brutishness and son's character as a mixture of appreciation and fright.

Discussion

In the poem "My Papa's Waltz”, Theodore Roethke portrays the father as a character of fright to his young son. The son's words “But I hung on like death;” gives the poem a feeling, that son's relationship with his father is grimmer. With the phrase, “The whiskey on your breadth could make a small boy dizzy”, depicts ambivalent feelings of the son toward his father. This combination of admiration and fear, comfort and restriction creates a clever balance between a positive and negative image of the poem (Roethke, 796).

The poet has kept a negative as well as a positive attitude of father-son relationship in "My Papa's Waltz." The son is holding terror and contentment in tension, but at the same time, the poet depicts the child as a dispassionate character with the use of words "waltzed off to bed" and holding on "like death." The attitude of the child toward his father is caring and he expresses his affection for his father by showing concern in his behavior. . Despite the father is a drunken man with dirty hands who sloppily hurt his son's ear and beat him, carefree rhythms filled with playfulness of riming words like dizzy and easy; the joyful of the poem; the suggestions of the words waltz, waltzing, and romped and the rollicking rhythms of the poem. The playfulness of a rime like dizzy and easy; selection of words like knuckle and buckle and feel in the last line of the poem “still clinging to your shirt” pictures the son with firm adoration towards his father (Roethke, 796).

Raymond Carver's “Popular Mechanics” is a short ...