Analysis of Plaths Daddy
Sylvia Plath uses her poem, Daddy, to express deep emotions toward her father's life and death. With passionate articulation, she verbally turns over her feelings of rage, abandonment, confusion and grief. Though this work is fraught with ambiguity, a reader can infer Plath's basic story. Her father was apparently a Nazi soldier killed in World War II while she was young. Her statements about not knowing even remotely where he was while he was in battle, the only photograph she has left of him and how she chose to marry a man that reminded her of him elude to her grief in losing her father and missing his presence. She also expresses a dark anger toward him for his political views and actions in such passages as: "Not God but a swastika / so black no sky could squeak through" and "...the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you." She goes on talk about how her poor or non-existent relationship with her father caused her to enter an unhealthy relationship. Finally, she conveys a mood of overcoming this man's dark hold on her. She is still filled with unhealthy rage toward him but in her repeating that she is "through" and discussing having killed someone she demonstrates her feelings of self-empowerment.
" As most victims or people with poor self-esteem, she chose to place herself in the same unpleasant life as she had had with her father by marrying a man that was just like him. You died before I had time-Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toeBig as a Frisco seal 10And a head in the freakish AtlanticWhere it pours bean green over blueIn the waters off beautiful Nauset. She also uses language that portrays darkness without using colors, for example in lines 71-73:"If I've killed one man, I've killed two-The vampire who said he was youAnd drank my blood for a year. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. But the name of the town is common. 5Daddy, I have had to kill you. She creates a poem that will enthrall the reader using mediums like vague material such as stanza two (2):"Daddy, I have had to kill you. She also presents a slight rhythm to the reading that allows for smooth reading. So I never could tell where youPut your foot, your root,I never could talk to you. To cite a particular example that might lead a reader deduce their own ideas can be found in the last stanza: "And the villagers never liked you. My Polack friend 20Says there are a dozen or two.
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Acceptance Essays
