Analysis Of `` Daddy `` By Sylvia Plath

Plath uses a hyperbole to drive the point of her father being the epitome of a Nazi by saying the swastika is so black it blocks out the sky. This extreme exaggeration helps drive across Plath’s point of her father being a complete Nazi. Near the end of the poem another allusion to Hitler is used. “I made a model of you, / a man in black with a Meinkampf look” (Plath 64-65). Here the father is described as a model, and an illusion to Hitler is made when she states he has a “Meinkampf look” with Mein Kampf being a book written by Hitler. Plath’s use of figurative language helps give a clear image of her relationship with her father and shows how she depicts him to be like a Nazi.

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

Poets, Judith Wright, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickenson all express their views on life and death, however, do so in varying manners. Through imagery, Wright and Plath both consider life’s beginnings, however, Wright considers it to be a beautiful gift, whereas Plath views birth as an empty burden. Subsequently, through structure Dickenson and Wright each acknowledge life, expressing how in some cases it is difficult, yet in other circumstances it is celebrated. Finally, through tone, Dickenson and Plath convey their views on death, yet differ in that Plath believes it is purifying and holds a sick fascination with it, while Dickenson instead holds a unique curiosity about it. Therefore, whilst each poet recognises the journey of birth,

In the poem “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath describes her true feelings about her deceased father. Throughout the dialogue, the reader can find many instances that illustrate a great feeling of hatred toward the author’s father. She begins by expressing her fears of her father and how he treated her. Subsequently she conveys her outlook on the wars being fought in Germany. She continues by explaining her life since her father and how it has related to him.

Sylvia Plath and Gwen Harwood tell two very different stories of parental relationships, Mother Who Gave Me Life praising Harwood’s mother and speaking with love and affection, whereas Plath’s Daddy is full of hate for her father. These reflections on the poet’s parental relationships are made using imagery, symbolism and tone.

Audre Lorde is a woman of different identities, ranging from being a black woman, a feminist, a lesbian, and a mother. In my opinion, in order to understand where a poet is coming from, we have to delve into a little of their background, much like how Sylvia Plath’s Daddy would not award the reader with its full meaning if you did not understand it as a whole. Audre Lorde was born in New York City, America in 1934. A small, but I think an extremely important fact is that Lorde’s birth-given name was actually ‘Audrey’ but at a young age, on her own accord, she dropped the ‘y’ from her name. This shows that even when she was small, she had a strong sense of non-conformity with her self-identity.

Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy,” is about a girl who has lost her father at a young age, and since his death, she cannot stop thinking about him. The speaker appears to be Plath consumed in metaphors that resemble the way she feels about her father and former husband. Plath’s father passed away when she was only eight in the poem she states, “I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I

Introduction: Conflicting perspectives are different points of view expressed and influenced by ones context and values. “Birthday Letters” by Ted Hughes is an anthology of poems challenging the accusation that he was responsible for his wife, Sylvia Plath’s death. The three poems The Minotaur, Your Paris, and Red are an insight into Hughes justification of the death of Plath using a very subjective and emotive poetic form. The poems possess many deliberate techniques such as extended metaphors, connotations, diction and juxtaposition to encourage the audience to accept his argument that he was not the one to blame for this world renown tragedy. The poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath also displays conflicting perspectives of the

Although everyone has a father, the relationship that each person has with his or her father is different. Some are close to their fathers, while some are distant; some children adore their fathers, while other children despise them. For example, in Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays” Hayden writes about his regret that he did not show his love for his hardworking father sooner. In Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” she writes about her hatred for her brute father. Despite both authors writing on the same topic, the two pieces are remarkably different. Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” and Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” have different themes that are assembled when the authors put their different uses of imagery, tone, and characterization together.

The speaker says that her German father is like a Nazi and that she feels like a Jew. This metaphor is the most powerful one in the entire poem. It shows us as readers how she feels like she is a victim of her father. She never directly calls him a Jew though. She points to the fact using metaphors and imagery. For example, the author wrote:

As is inherent within the tradition of confessional poetry, a subgenre of lyric poetry which was most prominent from the fifties to the seventies (Moore), Sylvia Plath uses the events of her own tragic life as the basis of creating a persona in order to examine unusual relationships. An excellent example of this technique is Plath’s poem “Daddy” from 1962, in which she skilfully manipulates both diction, trope and, of course, rhetoric to create a character which, although separate from Plath herself, draws on aspects of her life to illustrate and make points about destructive, interhuman relations. Firstly that of a father and daughter, but later also that of a wife and her unfaithful husband.

The villanelle that stood out to me was Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath. This villanelle really spoke to me because it was so clearly about unrequited love and lies. Her use of personification and motion within her poem is very good. I can feel all her emotions into this poem- the sadness, the love, the hope of her lover to come back. It makes me think about all those stupid little crushes that I once had in middle school and even in high school because you believe that they are obviously the love of your life when usually that is not the case.

By just reading Sylvia Plath’s works of writing, it is apparent that she had an infatuation with portraying negative and brutal thoughts. For example, her poem “Daddy,” she clearly expresses her rage towards her deceased father. The poem is full of contradiction and the interpretation is up the reader. Pieces like this gives insight into Sylvia’s mental sanity, which was questioned at times. In her early

Sylvia Plath?s poem "Daddy" describes her feelings of oppression from her childhood and conjures the struggle many women face in a male-dominated society. The conflict of this poem is male authority versus the right of a female to control her own life and be free of male domination. Plath?s conflicts begin with her father and continue into the relationship between her and her husband. This conflict is examined in lines 71-80 of "Daddy" in which Plath compares the damage her father caused to that of her husband.

Plath uses similes and metaphors to describe herself as a foot being cowed by a black shoe- her father- in which she barely dares to move. Other very intense similes and metaphors such as "Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belson," and "I think I may well be a Jew" clearly show the feelings of anguish and hopelessness she felt under her father’s control.