Summary
Now, the speaker zooms in, describing the way his father holds him by the wrist. The father's hand, he says, is a bit beaten-up on one knuckle. As the father misses steps in the dance, disrupting their rhythm, the two of them collide and the speaker's head scrapes against the father's belt buckle. The father keeps time by tapping the speaker's head with his hand, which is dirty and hardened. Then, at the poem's conclusion, the father carries the speaker off to bed, with the speaker clutching the father's shirt.
Analysis
In this part of the poem, the hints of violence and abuse become heavier. We see that the father has his son in a harsh grip, holding on to his wrist. Meanwhile, the father misses steps—perhaps another indication of the previously hinted-at drunkenness or alcoholism. The father keeps time on the speaker's head, in itself not a particularly violent image. But Roethke chooses to use the word "beat," indicating a more sinister action. Similarly, the father's hand is described as "battered." While this is clearly an instance of the father rather than the son being harmed, the mere word "battered" is a conspicuously violent, hostile-sounding one. In this second half of the poem, Roethke also hints very obliquely that there may be sexual abuse occurring. The mention of the speaker's head scraping a buckle (presumably a belt buckle), and of the speaker being carried off to bed, both have been used to support this interpretation. At the same time, Roethke keeps the tension between violence and playfulness going by juxtaposing these harsh-sounding words with a set of softer, more whimsical sounding ones—"whisked" and "waltzed"—towards the poem's close. In total, the poem's diction seems to be drawn from two poles, one implying violence, the other gentleness.
Roethke's choice of imagery, meanwhile, is careful, simultaneously suggesting brutality and hinting at accepted, even beloved, masculine ideals. Whiskey, for example, carries connotations of masculine strength and sophistication—but here, it also carries connotations of alcohol-induced abusiveness. The father's dirt-caked and battered hand, in the context of the poem, may be slapping the speaker. But these descriptors also recall ideals of hardworking, salt-of-the-earth masculinity. Even the earlier image of a mother frowning at a father's antics borrow from well-worn narratives about personality and gender roles, while still suggesting that the mother's concerns go beyond mere unwarranted nagging. By choosing images that straddle this line, simultaneously evoking familiar gender associations and violence, Roethke suggests that these two categories aren't completely separate. In other words, he encourages the reader to examine ideals of masculinity with skepticism, looking for violence in the familiar.
