In Theodor Roethke's "My Papa's waltz" the reader finds a horrid experiance, the beating of a child by his father, which is told in a way of a romantic and beutifull dance - the waltz. The feeling one get from reading this poem is that the narrator, at least at the time in which the poem is written, does not look at this experience as something bad. He tries to beutify the experience by making it a waltz. He also, by means of images and rythem, shows the conflict between the readers, or the way any other 'normal' man will look at this experia ....