Hello People of the book,
To fuel your discussion this week, you might consider what other students have written about our poem in the past years. Why don't you react to some of their comments? Can you explain the debate over this poem?
I also encourage your valuable comments concerning the novel.
Have a nice week!
Olivier Pelletier
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There is a debate over the poem ''Papa?'' because every line can inspire people differently depending of their own interpretation of the meaning of some parts like ''But I hung on like death'' or ''You beat time on my head''. The negative connotation of words (death, whiskey, beat, dirt...), when you first read it, can bring the reader to imagine that the dad is abusing his son. But when you read it deeply, the poem takes a more positive sens. The dad is only waltzing with his son before going to sleep.
ReplyDelete''Flowers for Algernon'' is a well written novel. It's interesting, as a reader, to follow the evolution of Charlie as he becomes smarter and more sensible to human's feelings like love or humiliation. Moreover, the fact that the novel is written like Charlie's journal makes it more interesting because the reader is distracted by the evolution of Charlie's spelling which becomes much more better with the operation. The writing follows the story.
I went around the blog to find comments about the Papa's poem. In the comments I read,there were: 'I completely misunderstood the poem' or 'I knew in the first place that it was a happy poem'. I'm in the case of the first person, I really thought that the daddy was abusing and making violence to his child, but I clearly misunderstood the sens. It wasn't negative, it was a great poem that makes the reader realizes the real sens of the poem,a positive one. For the book, I'm enjoying the fact that there is now a love story or I better say there is a human relation that is happening between Fay and Charlie. I agree with Marie-Ève about the fact that the Charlie's journal makes the book easier to read and understand.
ReplyDeleteThis poem can be perceived differently, depending of the person and explanations that come with it: I still tend to believe that this poem is about a kid (I say a kid because his ear is scraped on his papa's buckle) who's drunken father (''the whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy'') decides to put him to bed for some reason. As he his father walks, it is almost like a Waltz: there is swaying and back and forward steps. The father is not a bad drunk: it is a ''happy'' drunkenness. His father is hard worker (''with a palm caked hard by dirt''). However, I tend to believe that the mother, unlike most would think, is unhappy because the father is drunk, and not because they're dancing in her kitchen.
ReplyDeleteThe author does not help with the understanding of this poem: he uses words in places which can lead to misunderstandings and very different perceptions, such as death, beat, whiskey, and a few more.
« Papa’s Waltz » is obviously a poem on which people could argue for a long time, because the idea of what happens will be different from one person to another. Some may think it is a poem about a drunken man who dances on the sound of an imaginary music with his son, but others may think that he only wants to get him to bed but, because he is drunk, he walks like if he were waltzing. It is a funny poem with a double sense, it makes people think twice before saying what is really happening.
ReplyDelete