Due to the fact that at the beginning of the poem he was drinking, this could show he gets aggressive while intoxicated. But could also show that he’s injured because he works hard and endlessly due to his “palm” being “caked by dirt” mentioned in the last stanza (14). Again back to his drinking and them dancing, the speaker says that every time he “missed” a step the speaker hurt their ear on “a buckle” (11-12). This shows the speaker is short in height and young compared their father, but is still unclear of the gender of the speaker. In the last stanza the speaker is shown to have fallen asleep by being “waltzed . . . off to bed” by her father (15). This can imply that the speaker is small enough to be held and possibly was rocked to sleep just as small children would cling on to the shirt as the speaker did. Throughout the poem the speaker seems to be remembering something due to their use of past tense and could be the reason of the use of the word waltz. Just as the waltz is a series of steps and actions, the speaker wanted to show their father’s steps or actions and possibly didn’t want to repeat the steps exactly and wanted to better their
Due to the fact that at the beginning of the poem he was drinking, this could show he gets aggressive while intoxicated. But could also show that he’s injured because he works hard and endlessly due to his “palm” being “caked by dirt” mentioned in the last stanza (14). Again back to his drinking and them dancing, the speaker says that every time he “missed” a step the speaker hurt their ear on “a buckle” (11-12). This shows the speaker is short in height and young compared their father, but is still unclear of the gender of the speaker. In the last stanza the speaker is shown to have fallen asleep by being “waltzed . . . off to bed” by her father (15). This can imply that the speaker is small enough to be held and possibly was rocked to sleep just as small children would cling on to the shirt as the speaker did. Throughout the poem the speaker seems to be remembering something due to their use of past tense and could be the reason of the use of the word waltz. Just as the waltz is a series of steps and actions, the speaker wanted to show their father’s steps or actions and possibly didn’t want to repeat the steps exactly and wanted to better their