Daddy By Sylvia Plath Figurative Language

Both Sylvia Plath and Lucille Clifton show great resentment toward their fathers that they are trying to overcome later in life. In the second stanza of her poem, Plath reveals her anger toward her father and his treatment of their family when she writes, “Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time.” This implies that the author may have strong enough feelings toward her father that she wishes she could have physically ended his life. It also shows that she is trying to bring an end to the control that he has over her life, even in his death. In “Forgiving My Father,” Clifton also shows a deep animosity toward her father and his inability and lack of motivation to provide for his family. The lines “there will never be time enough daddy daddy old lecher old liar” indicate that Clifton, too, carries unresolved feelings of resentment about her father that she struggles with even after his death. Both authors present a tone of anger, not only at their fathers for their behavior, but also at time for taking their fathers early and leaving them to deal with these feelings alone.

The figurative language in the poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath can be used to discover a deeper significant of the poem. By using figurative language throughout the poem such as symbolism, imagery, and wordplay, Plath reveals hidden messages about her relationship with her father. Plath uses symbols of Nazis, vampires, size, and communication to help reveal a message about her dad.

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

These lines are frightening, but unfortunately real. Plath tells us that she has married someone exactly like her father, a man who has a “my struggle” look, a German look. The third line above seems to mean that her husband, who was poet Ted Hughes, cheated on her, in turn abandoning her. But she still said “I do” and agreed to be with him.

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.

The poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath concludes with the symbolic scene of the speaker killing her vampire father.  On an obvious level this represents Plath's struggle to deal with the haunting influence of her own father who died when she was a little girl.  However, as Mary G. DeJong points out, "Now that Plath's work is better known, ‘Daddy' is generally recognized as more than a confession of her personal feelings towards her father" (34-35).  In the context of the poem the scene's symbolism becomes ambiguous because mixed in with descriptions of the poet's father are clear references to her husband, who left her for another woman as "Daddy" was being written.  The problem for the

Throughout time, fathers and daughters have had special relationships. Some, the best relationship a girl could ever hope for. For others, the relationship is not so great. Sylvia Plath and Lucille Clifton wrote poems describing the darker side of a father-daughter relationship. Their poems demonstrate them in different ways. The poets of “Forgiving my Father” and “Daddy” demonstrate the theme, unresolved anger leads to lifelong bitterness, because both narrators hate their fathers for lying, blame their fathers for ruining their lives, and, finally, learning to cut their fathers out of their lives.

Both Robert Hayden and Sylvia Plath wrote poems in which they spoke their fathers, who once stood above them. While their poems “Daddy” and “Those Winter Sundays” delve into the topic of fatherhood, the different usages of theme, ideas, tone and sound, as well as figurative language show each author’s true feelings about their respective fathers. The figures showcased (or simply alluded to) in the poems affect the overall theme and ideas

Lucille Clifton’s poem “forgiving my father” is about a girl who has rough moments with her dad and she is not ready to forgive him because she is still recovering from it. She always thinks about how her father’s absence and his lack of care in their life took her mom’s life which caused her mental distress. The father was a danger to the child in many ways. The speaker was mentally distress and financially in debt because of her father. In Sylvia Plath's poem “Daddy” the speaker had different tone in the beginning of the poem which shows that she might have a loving and caring father but then her tone suddenly changes from being affectionate to in the form of bitterness where she can not contain herself from wanting to be a murderer.

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

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 dominant image of a father figure that we are left with after reading this poem is far from a loving or pleasant one. In fact, it is rather the opposite. The “Daddy” whom the speaker is addressing in this poem ends up being portrayed as a vampire, who “the villagers” (77) — perhaps the people surrounding the speaker— never seemed to be fond of. This strengthens the image of a highly dysfunctional relationship, rather than a “normal,” loving one. As readers, we have to ask ourselves about the reliability of Plath’s character; however, seeing as she is clearly emotionally unstable. We learn about at least one suicide attempt in the lines

The poem starts with the narrator announcing herself as a riddle in nine syllables. The nine syllables is the first hint that the poem is going to be about pregnancy. Plath correlated the use of the word ‘nine’ to the length of a pregnancy, giving the reader an inkling of what is to be expected of the poem. The narrator then goes on to describe herself as an elephant, then a house, two very distinctively large objects. She is now mocking the weight gain caused by pregnancy and she furthers this by comparing herself to a melon, strolling on two tendrils.

How Sylvia Plath's Life is Reflected in the Poems Daddy, Morning Song, and Lady Lazarus

Sylvia Plath’s poetry is well known for its deeply personal and emotional subject matter. Much of Plath’s poetry is confessional and divulges the most intimate parts of her psyche whether through metaphor or openly, without creating a persona through which to project her feelings, and through the use of intense imagery. Plath’s attempt to purge herself of the oppressive male figures in her life is one such deeply personal and fundamental theme in her poetry. In her poem, “Daddy”, which declares her hatred for her father and husband, this attempt is expressed through language, structure, and tone. (Perkins, 591)