The Dance in My Papa Waltz Literary Analysis

Present an argument concerning the nature of the speaker’s experience in “My Papa’s Waltz.”  For instance, do you consider the speaker’s experience to be positive or negative?  How can you tell?

Read this next part twice; it is crucial:  You must write about whether or not the boy is enjoying the dance with his father.  In other words, you must write about the experience as a dance. Do not write about the dance as a metaphor for a beating, something that, in our context, would be arguing from faulty analogy, a logical fallacy.

Some things to remember as you construct your argument:

1. You must present an assertion about the nature of the experience in the poem.
2. For example: The speaker’s experience in “My Papa’s Waltz” is a ________ one, as we can see through examination of _________.                                                                                              
3. You must provide supporting evidence.  In this case, the only evidence you have is the poem your interpretation of the poem and the secondary material distributed in class.
4. You must also anticipate and answer the opposing position. This is your refutation.  In your refutation paragraphs, state the opposing view, followed by your view, followed by an example (or examples) followed by analysis.

I would prefer that you wrote this as a deductive argument, with the thesis at the end of the introductory paragraph.  If you see the need for your paper to be inductive, please visit with me about why.

The voice in this paper should be academic, third person, formal.  Also, this is literary analysis, so you should discuss the action in the poem in present tense, i.e.—“My Papa’s Waltz” portrays and encounter between the speaker and the father.  Notice the use of portrays rather than portrayed.

Also, after quotations (your evidence), give line numbers in parentheses, i.e.—“The speaker states, “We romped until the pans / Slid from the kitchen shelf;” (5-6).  (Note the slash, which indicates a line break.  A space precedes and follows the slash.)  If you quote from the secondary material (Kennedy and Gioia or Kennedy, Kennedy and Gioia), please cite those names and the page number on which the statement was found.  If you quote Hind, who is quoted in Kennedy, Kennedy and Gioia, use model 15, p. 128 in  The Little Seagull Handbook. For your work cited entry for the poem, use the model for a work from an anthology found in model 19, page 144, in The Little Seagull Handbook.