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Poem Analysis

The poem tells about a drunken father who forced his son to dance with him. They

romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf, and the mother didn’t do
anything. She seemed to be afraid to interfere. In each missed step that the father

made, he carelessly hurt the son’s ear and with a dirty hand, he also beat on the

son’s head. When the father dropped the son on the bed, the boy’s still clinging to
his father’s shirt.

Tone

There's an ambiguity built up in the poem so that, on the one hand this is a light

and frolicking poem, yet there's darkness and uncertainty too. The child hangs on
to the whiskey drinking father like death, and the father's dirty hand beats time on

his son's head. Not an orthodox word to use in this context.

Poetic

Devices

This poem belongs to rhymed verse form poem

In this poem you'll find assonance - repeated use of the same vowel sounds

(still/clinging), and also in the lines:

Literature I – Magazine