daddy
Sylvia Plath reveals herself in her confessional poem Daddy. She uses strong imagery and powerful speech to show her attitudes towards her late father, Otto Plath and her husband, Ted Hughes, who also hurt her in the end. Her tone implies a strong hatred and disgust for the relationships with both men. The poem was written in 1963 which happened to be the same year that she committed suicide. Plath had a history of troubled times and attempted suicide. Plath describes her relationship and feelings of guilt, fear, and pain her father=s death caused her. Plath used imagery heavily in her poem to show her emotions. She casts her father into different parts throughout the poem. Plath=s images of her father are compared to God, a Nazi, the Devil, and a vampire. All of these images are powerful on their own but by being put together they are almighty and frightening. In the beginning the speaker=s childhood memories of her father are God-like to her. Her father wasn`t God, but just Aa bag of God(8). He must have been very powerful and impressive to her. She continues to describe her father as a Ghastly statue with one gray toe (9), showing that her father was overwhelming and as if he was only a copy of a person, fake and cold. Her fath
Her last monestrous image she gives her father is that of a vampire. Then Plath goes on to describe her father as a Nazi and places herself in the role of the Jew. In the beginning of the second half of ADaddy,@ it is hard to pinpoint which man she is referring to. This is the point in the poem which Plath revels her husband=s character more. In this monologue of a woman to her Daddy, Plath addresses issues of abandonment and pain that her father and husband caused her. Thought Plath is convinced that it does not make her father any less of a devil. Everything that her father was, was something that she couldn`t relate with. There was never such powerful closure as Plath last line addressed to her father, Sad to note that she was really, she killed herself the same year ending a life of troubles and writings of excellence. AA cleft in your chin instead of your foot / But no less of a devil for that, no not@ (53-54). She also identified with her Agypsy ancestress=, showing that she was far away from the acceptable Nazi image. This helps explain how she feels that she is a victim. Once she was able to kill the memory of her father, the separation of the two men occurred. Maybe it was an attempt to bring her father back or maybe it was something she did to try to cope with the unfinished feelings she had dealing with his early death. In line 67 she says AI do, I do@, implying that she was not just marriage Ted Hughes but also marring the memory of her father.
Common topics in this essay:
Ted Hughes,
God Aa,
Devil AA,
Daddy Plath,
Star David,
Otto Plath,
Nazi Devil,
Sylvia Plath,
memory father,
describe father,
father husband,
ted hughes,
father devil,
plath imagery,
otto plath,
attempted suicide,
deceased father,
father maybe,
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Acceptance Essays
