"Daddy" by Sylvia Plath is a powerful and emotionally charged poem that explores themes of loss, trauma, and the complexities of relationships. The speaker in the poem is Plath herself, and the "daddy" she refers to is her own father, Otto Plath, who died when she was just eight years old.
The poem begins with the speaker addressing her father as a "black shoe" and a "Ghastly statue," emphasizing the distance and coldness she feels towards him. Plath's father was a strict and demanding man who expected perfection from his children, and the speaker in the poem seems to be struggling with feelings of resentment and anger towards him.
As the poem progresses, the speaker reveals that she has married a man who resembles her father in many ways, and that this marriage has been emotionally and physically abusive. The speaker describes her husband as a "vampire" who "drinks [her] blood," suggesting that she has been emotionally drained and consumed by this relationship.
The speaker's feelings towards her father are further complicated by the fact that he died when she was young, leaving her with unresolved feelings of grief and loss. The speaker expresses her desire to "bury the square in the round hole" of her father's grave, suggesting that she is still struggling to come to terms with his death and find a way to move on.
Throughout the poem, the speaker grapples with the complexities of her relationship with her father and the ways in which his absence has affected her life. She expresses a deep sense of longing and desire to reconnect with him, but also a sense of anger and resentment towards him for the ways in which he has hurt and disappointed her.
In the final stanza, the speaker declares that she has finally freed herself from the hold her father and his memory have had on her, saying, "I have always been scared of you," but now "I am the arrow, / You are the bow." This suggests that she has found the strength and resilience to move on from the past and create her own identity.
Overall, "Daddy" is a deeply moving and poignant exploration of the complex and often painful relationships we have with our parents. It speaks to the ways in which our experiences and relationships with our parents can shape and influence us in profound ways, and the importance of finding the strength to move on and create our own identities.
Daddy Themes
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You—— Not God but a swastika So black no sky could Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. I think I may well be a Jew The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. Daddy, I have had to kill you.
The first age it reflects is her youth, particularly right after her father died. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You— Not God but a swastika The number of allusions to Germans, Nazis, and brutality throughout the poem is astonishing. Order now, and your customized paper without ANY plagiarism will be ready in merely 3 hours! In the final line, the speaker celebrates the father's death, but the victory is hollow. The implication is that it is only now that she has found this restriction, this dominance by the father-figure, unsatisfactory. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna, Are not very pure or true.
That is where love is present. He was a simple man who made sausages. Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts on October 27th, 1932 and died in London, United Kingdom on February 11th, 1963 at the age of 31 years old. Learn More Women have no option but to put up with cruel men, who occasion untold suffering to the womenfolk. Daddy, I have had to kill you. Had Plath attempted to remove emotion from the piece as Howe suggests, it would have lost much of its strength of purpose as well as its ability to convey, to some degree, the feelings of women everywhere who felt this same sense of oppressive, inescapable terror, held captive by their own emotions to be slaves and victims of their male counterparts. The speaker uses M etaphors and Similes to express her feelings for her father throughout the poem.
The second stanza tells us that Daddy never changed after the speaker grew up, no matter how hard she tried to get him to grow with her. In her mind, marrying someone with characteristics similar to her father would erase the memories that kept on haunting her. I could hardly speak. This imagery is the device that places the mental image in the mind of the reader or listener without their explicit consent and begins to conjure up a sense of sympathy with the poet regarding their emotional response to the subject. In the first few lines of the poem, the speaker becomes aware that the memory of her father has presented an immense weight on her. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two.
You died before I had time—— Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. The people of Sighet surround themselves with a wall of delusion; they continually deny the reality of their situation. But the name of the town is common. Few readers, arguably, would think the closing statement is anything but a despairing cry that nothing positive has been accomplished. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true.
You died before I had time— Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. However, the entire poem suggests otherwise. The male figure used in this poem is in the shape of Hitler, a man of unfathomable evil. Men have been vampires, drinking her blood and draining her of life, but as in legend, they have been destroyed with the stake in the heart. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. Given that the father in this poem represents the oppressive societal structure women like Plath sought to overcome. And I said I do, I do.
One of the wonderful aspects of poetry is its ability to appeal to the inner emotions of the reader with just a few lines and a well-developed metaphor. This gives the impression that the lines of the poem were written as the thoughts occurred to the author with little or no editing involved. The urge of the poet to have one more glimpse of her father is one of the highlights of her poem. Plath wrote about her father's death that occurred when she was eight years old and of her ongoing battle trying to free herself from her father. The persona suffers under the rule of patriarchy for thirty years. This poem explores the other side of the father-daughter relationship.
You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. Finding important technical elements in the story, the metaphor created and the rhythm depicted all strive to convey to the reader the same sense of breathless terror, heavy oppression and absence of hope for relief even after burying the stake in the heart of the monster. This clearly illustrates the alienation between father and daughter. However, she also calls him a murderer, which would make you think of someone committing homicide or murder, making you feel like an angry son or daughter would feel towards their father. In the poem Daddy, there is an inevitable blanket condemnation of men in general.
In the poem Daddy memory also defines the development of the speaker in terms of physiological and emotional growth. She then decides to take matters into her own hands and attempts to commit suicide. Vampires, in most mythologies, are killed by driving a stake through their hearts. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. Enjambment: When a line is terminated before it naturally comes to an end, this happens.
The reader can sense her suffering because of the way she writes. This last possibility is the most revelatory thing of all in a poem that is terrifying in its openness and its confession of the dark side of human nature. Despite the hatred fells felt for him, she wishes to be reunited with him in death: Writing an essay? Ambivalence An emotion pulling the speaker, and the reader along with her, in opposite directions is the essence of the poem. The poet pronounces a death sentence to any man falling short of the glory and is less than human to their loved ones. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. As the Germans tortured and killed the Jews and Roma, she herself has been tortured, and so she merges with the persecuted groups and imagines herself one of them.
