Poem Interpretations: How Life Experiences Shape A Person's Relationship with God More Than We Realize

Sometimes, our own experiences really shape the way that we see certain things. I had the most amazing experience with this today in my 2nd period AP English class. We were looking at the poem "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke.


My Papa's Waltz
by Theodore Roethke

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.

Tieche's Interpretation
Being a recent father, I imagined the poem to be about a memory of a boy recalling a time where his father swept him up in his arms, and the two "romped" around the kitchen until he "waltzed" his boy to sleep, with his son clinging to his shirt, as if to say, "I don't want to go to bed, Papa." In short, I took the poem as positive.

Half the Class' Interpretation
However, not everyone in the class saw that. Many saw evidence of alcholism and the abuse that sometimes accompanies it. They saw words like "mother's countenence could no unfrown itself" as a sign of marital disapproval: this was not a sweet thing. Also, the father is clearly drunk, if the smell of whiskey was so thick that it could make a boy "dizzy." And the strange metaphor, "I hung on like death" doesn't lend itself to positive interpretations.

The "romping" they said was not fun and joyful, but more violent in nature, to the point where pans were falling off the shelves. At the very least, the father seems a bit out of control. And maybe not in a good way. And then the final line, about clinging, one of my students said, "When you're a boy, and your parents hit you, you still cling to them, you want to be near them, even though they hurt you."

This interpretation seems true as well.

Ambiguity
The point in all this, I suppose, is how so much of life is colored by our own experiences. I asked the class to vote: about 50 percent of the kids said they agreed with the "nice" interpretation and about 50 percent said that they detected abuse. It wasn't split down gender or racial or intelligence lines either: it was really 50/50.

From a poetry standpoint, Roethke's poem is ambiguous enough to lend itself to interpretations either way. What gets me is the way people lean based on their experience.

It got me thinking a lot about God. How many times do people, looking at what seems like pretty ambiguous evidence in life, make suppositions about God based on their experience. This happened to me, so God is mean. Or this happened over here, so God isn't fair. And a lot of people think that the evidence in life really could go either way.

In her famous poem I Never Lost As Much But Twice famed American poet Emily Dickinson puts forth her embittered view of God - a theme that runs through many of her poems. She writes:

I never lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod.
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!

Angels — twice descending
Reimbursed my store —
Burglar! Banker — Father!
I am poor once more!

God here, is described as a Burglar. Not just a thieft, but a thief in your home. And the idea of God as a Banker - an impersonal, calculating figure with whom we not only can't argue with, but who holds authority and isn't really caring - is really a destructive way to view God.

I imagine just looking at the world, a lot of people get this concept of God. How unfair this is to God, and how much it must hurt His heart.

My first year teaching, I had this kid, Sean, who was killing himself with drugs. He was about 5 foot 5, and 95 pounds. He'd go into McDonalds in the morning before school and snort a line in the bathroom. He'd come down in my class, sometimes. I spent hours pursuing a solution, listening to him, talking to counselors about him, talking to counselors with him. One day, he said to me:

"You don't care about me. You don't care about a lot of your students. You just do this stuff so you can make yourself feel good, and be all Christian."

That really hurt. And I bet a lot of things get said about God that don't give God nearly the credit he deserves. Or make him into a Monster.

I guess part of being a Christian is reminding the word that God really is good. Sometimes that means telling His story, both from Scripture and from our lives.

And sometimes, I guess it means convincing people through our actions exactly the kind of God that God is, and trying to prove - through graciousness, justice and vast amounts of unmerited generosity - that God really is good. We have to swing the evidence away from ambuity.

So I guess I have a new question to ask God daily: What kinds of things can I do today that will swing someone's opinion?

It's a dangerous question to ask because it might require me to give up what I have (money, time, emotional effort, etc) so that someone else might be whole. This is never easy. But always worth it.