The Thoughts of Youth are Long, Long Thoughts

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer discusses that Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" and Billy Bob Thornton's 'Sling Blade' share between them the idea that a boy orphaned by his father by time or circumstance, will cling to surrogate fathers, or memories of fathers whether appropriate or inappropriate. The writer maintains that comparing the two works across disciplines suggests that their similarities are both a result of basic truths about the relationship between boys and their fathers. The writer also maintains that "My Papa's Waltz" and 'Sling Blade' are best described as unsentimental looks at the events that inform a young man's journey into manhood in all their aggression and complexity. According to the paper, both works are odes to lost youth that suggest this poignant understanding of the balance between what is true and what is fact, struck by all individuals in the crafting of their own life stories, but only in the rearview.

From the Paper:

"On a structural level, Roethke and Thornton both use carefully metered action and verse to first conjure a mood before peppering their pieces with images of class and then aggression before, finally, resolving in the hope of a future for the child in which the memories of his father can find refuge in the well-remembered past. More, both works are patterned as reveries: the former Roethke's recollection of his relationship with his Prussian father, Otto, and his connection to the greenhouse of his youth; the latter opening with the character Karl's memories of the murder of his mother and her lover, precipitating the incarceration from which he's about to be released. Both reveal an interest in perception and the past (and should one indulge in a Freudian analysis, both would seem open texts to such a dissection as well), and though the film will settle into what seems like an extended extrapolation of the thorny relationship only hinted at by Roethke's poem, both carry with them that whiff of bereavement: the Romanticism of lost youth that is equal parts nostalgia and its attendant melancholy."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Balakian, Peter. Theodore Roethke's Far Fields. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989.
• Ciardi, John, and Miller Williams. How Does A Poem Mean? 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton, 1975.
• Ebert, Roger. "Sling Blade." The Chicago Tribune. 29 Dec. 1996.
• Fong, Bobby. "Roethke's 'My Papa's Waltz.'" College Literature 17.1 (1990): 79-82.
• Galvin, Brendan. "Kenneth Burke and Theodore Roethke's 'Lost Son' Poems." Theodore Roethke. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. 85-112.

More papers on The Thoughts of Youth are Long, Long Thoughts:

• Essay # 137741 : "The Impact of Youth Violence in the Educational "
• Analytical Essay # 27869 : "American Government and the Politics of Youth"
• Essay # 34783 : "The Division Of Youth And Family Services"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: