Ashley Jones
CrtRdgPaper1
September 20, 2009
Eye of the Beholder:
Respect Regardless of Circumstance
Respect and admiration are two things acquired by gaining another person’s trust and
confidence; they are not easily gained, but can be very easily lost. In the eye of the beholder,
these two virtues can mean everything. Both “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke and
Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” are poems that, in my perspective, deal solely with respect and
admiration felt by the speaker of each of the poems. Although this message in “My Papa’s
Waltz” is slightly more veiled than in “The Fish,” it is still very clear and easily visible after a
deeper analysis.
“My Papa’s Waltz” and “The Fish” are more related than it appears on the surface. Both,
overall, have positive connotations on the surface with negative undertones strewn in every so
often. Each poem highlights the notion of admiration, whether it be the child toward his father,
or the captor toward the fish. Both the father and the fish in these poems are fighting hard to stay
alive in their captor’s eye, in a sense. In Roethke’s poem, the father is working hard to teach his
son the values of hard work and still being able to play and have fun with life, while in Bishop’s
poem, the fish is trying to simply fight for his life and to stay alive after so many times of being
caught.
While “The Fish” is more direct with the speaker’s admiration toward the fish, it takes a
couple different readings of “My Papa’s Waltz” to catch on to the positive connotations
associated with this poem. Upon the first few readings of this poem, I was under the impression
that the young boy’s father was nothing more than a dirty, old drunk who worked by day, went to
the bar after he got off, and then came home drunkenly to his son who waited up for him to get
home and put him to bed at night. Then, after class discussion and some reflective thought on
my part, I came to drastically change my views concerning the actual meaning of Roethke’s
poem.
The subjects of both poems (the loving child and the weary fish) relate largely in the fact
that they are both more delicate and precious than those more powerful than themselves (the
father and the speaker of “The Fish”). Regardless of how futile efforts may seem by the child
and the fish, respect is still completely abundant throughout each of the poems. The young boy
refused to give up on his father, no matter what type of lifestyle he had—whether it was getting
drunk and coming home and tearing up the house, or if it was being a role model and working
hard every day to put food on the table and then coming home to love the family he has
created—and he is too young to know better either way, so all he knows is that he is supposed to
love and cherish him, no questions asked. In terms of the Bishop’s fish, the speaker begins and
ends the poem very enthusiastically and then becomes very thoughtful and direct in the next
couple of stanzas. Throughout these transitions, the speaker is admiring the fish and his lifelong
efforts to fight to stay alive and the collection of battle scars he has acquired throughout his
brawls.
Acceptance is also a major theme in both of these poems from the 1940’s. Both the fish
and the young child have given up and accepted their position in comparison to the larger being
in their lives. They have come to recognize the ritual as being right and typical, as if it is how
life is supposed to be; this is all they have known and all they will ever know as being “right.”
This simplistic idea that whatever they have experienced is supposed to be considered right
causes them to be very easily content, and they have both come to accept their place in the
universe, no matter how much it may hurt them in the present or later in the future. A good
example in Roethke’s collection, bringing this message together in both poems, is his poem,
“The Lost Son,” in which the fifth verse:
Tell me:
Which is the way I take;
Out of what door do I go,
Where and to whom?
(Editor's Selection of Poems (The Lost Son) by Theodore Roethke, 1.5.24-27)
In these few lines, I find that Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” and Bishop’s “The Fish” are
conjoined. This poem, as a whole, describes the feeling of being completely alone and lost and
wishing someone else could help the speaker to work through his/her life issues. It relates to the
idea, in the two poems under analysis, of the child and the fish being completely lost and settling
for what they have come to know as being normal. Neither the child nor the fish has anyone else
to help them through their problems or to teach them what normal really should be, but if they
did, and if they learned a new outlook on life, they would be much happier and less likely to
easily adapt to what life throws at them.
Diving into the more easily understood and less contrary poem, Bishop’s “The Fish,” we
are presented with the account of the speaker of the poem recounting a time he/she caught a large
fish. This poem begins with a positive connotation describing the speaker’s excitement and
enthusiasm upon catching a monster fish. Then, the poem turns around to give off a more
negative connotation pointing out the fish’s weariness of being caught so many times. The fish
is introduced in the first few lines as being filled with desperation and quittance in that “He
didn’t fight. He hadn’t fought at all” (Bishop). In the next few lines, though, the speaker
describes the fish with too much effort, when not that much is actually required, proving that
he/she is still excited and amazed, despite the fish’s indifferent attitude toward being caught.
Throughout the majority of the remaining lines of “The Fish,” it seems that the fish is
very near death mentally, and allowing himself to approach death physically with his unfeeling
approach toward life. He allowed himself to become “infested with tiny white sea-lice” and his
eyes “were…yellowed, the irises backed” and his face was “sullen” (Bishop). It is also apparent
that the fish is uncaring and annoyed at the recurrence of being caught time and time again.
Clearly trying to avoid looking at his captor, he is acting like a woman upset with her lover and
ignoring his efforts to make her establish eye contact when she is upset with him, as is shown in
the lines “[His eyes] shifted a little, but not to return my stare” (Bishop). The fish is clearly
upset and embarrassed for having been caught yet again, but despite this weariness he shows, the
speaker still has an enduring respect toward him for his ability to survive and fight and try as
long as he did.
With Roethke’s poem, “My Papa’s Waltz,” it appears upon first reading to some that
“papa” is a habitual, rough drunk and stumbles carelessly around with his son after he comes
home from spending his daily pay at the bar. However, after deeper analysis and learning more
about Roethke’s background history, one can conclude that this poem may ultimately be
describing Roethke’s own biological father. His father was a loving, nurturing man who was
dedicated to his work in his greenhouses passed down by his own father, Wilhelm (McRoberts).
Although he also appeared to have had a drinking problem—much like the father in the poem—
he was still a hard worker and tried to pass that on to his son through their many hours spent
together tending to the gardens. This was probably the relationship shown in Roethke’s poem
between the father and the young son. Roethke respected his father because of the long hours
they spent together every day, while at the same time he knew his father could sometimes be
very careless, as is shown by his drinking problem, both in life and in the poem. No matter how
much the speaker’s father, and Roethke’s father, failed, they both still loved and adored their
fathers simply because of their title and relation to them. Both the speaker and Roethke knew
who their fathers really were and could see deeper than anyone else viewing the relationships
from the outside, and they knew how decent of a man their fathers really were and how much
they loved them.
REFERENCES
(2008, March 8). Editor's Selection of Poems (The Lost Son) by Theodore Roethke. Retrieved
from http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=369&c=230
McRoberts, P. (2003, March 13). HistoryLink.org-the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington
State History. Retrieved from
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=5410