The title of the poem “Daddy” immediately makes the reader think of authority due to the childish nature of the word. This is idea is reinforced from the first line of “You do not do, you do not do”, implying that someone is scolding a child perhaps. However, it could also have sexual undertones to it, referring to Plath’s relationship to her husband which could infer there were similarities between her father and her husband. Furthermore, this links to the idea that it could also have an underlying theme of abuse; whether this is abuse by her father or by her husband, is unclear through the title, but is explored throughout the poem.
Plath’s father, Otto Plath, had gangrene which eventually caused his entire leg to be amputated. Plath was severely impacted by his death as she feels as though she “lived like a foot”, suggesting that her father was negligent of Plath which made
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Plath broadens her feelings out to include all women, maybe because there are some who tolerate domestic abuse, or because fascist leaders like Hitler became something of a sex symbol in the states they controlled. Plath can be seen as an early feminist, so this statement can be argued to be ironic. The internal rhyme of ‘boot’ and ‘brute’, repeated 3 times, and the consonant ‘heart’; when read aloud, this sounds as one is spitting with disgust. The last few stanzas of the poem are ambiguous as Plath constantly repeats that she is “through”. It can be inferred that Plath is putting the past behind her and that the poem has feelings of closure towards her father, which makes the overall tone of the poem therapeutic, which makes the poem confessional, unlike the beginning of the poem where it appears the poem is conveying her bitterness. However, the telephone is mentioned as a form of communication. It is unclear whether she is ‘through’ meaning finished with him, or that she’s finally communicated her rejection of
“Finding Daddy-Survival and Hope Through a 911 Tele-communicators Nightmare”, is truly and amazing story about love, faith and death. Sheila and Johnny started their relationship out as friends and later became lovers that faced parenthood at an early age. The Hanna’s faced several setbacks in their relationship in the beginning; however, the complexities in their relationship made them closer as a couple. This story brings awareness of living each minute of the day as if it was your last, because you never know when tragedy will hit home. Johnny loved his family and made sure he spent quality time with his children every day. Johnny was describes as a frugal man; however he worked very hard to provide for wife and children. Johnny made changes in his life in regards to his religious beliefs and became saved by accepting God as his savior. Reading the story how Johnny made the decision to go to the altar with his sons brought tears to my eyes.
One of the most difficult, yet rewarding roles is that of a parent. The relationship between and parent and child is so complex and important that a parents relationship with her/his child can affect the relationship that the child has with his/her friends and lovers. A child will watch their parents and use them as role models and in turn project what the child has learned into all of the relationship that he child will have. The way a parent interacts with his/her child has a huge impact on the child’s social and emotional development. Such cases of parent and child relationships are presented in Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” and Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”. While Roethke and Plath both write about a dynamic between a child-father relationship that seems unhealthy and abusive, Plath writes about a complex and tense child-father relationship in which the child hates her father, whereas Roethke writes about a complex and more relaxed child-father relationship in which the son loves his father. Through the use of tone, rhyme, meter, and imagery, both poems illustrate different child-father relationships in which each child has a different set of feelings toward their father.
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
It tends to be the trend for women who have had traumatic childhoods to be attracted to men who epitomize their emptiness felt as children. Women who have had unaffectionate or absent fathers, adulterous husbands or boyfriends, or relatives who molested them seem to become involved in relationships with men who, instead of being the opposite of the “monsters” in their lives, are the exact replicas of these ugly men. Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” is a perfect example of this unfortunate trend. In this poem, she speaks directly to her dead father and her husband who has been cheating on her, as the poem so indicates.
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.
Plath describes her father as classically Aryan in appearance ‘your neat moustache/and your Aryan eye, bright blue’ making him the antagonist in their relationship, reinforced by her descriptions as herself as a Jew, or the victim, ‘chuffing me off like a Jew.../I have always been scared of you’. Although the Nazi comparisons are abundant throughout the poem she also uses symbolism and other comparisons to make the same point. She conjures the image of her father as a dark and monstrous creature who, ‘bit my pretty red heart in two/...the vampire who said he was you’ reinforcing the audience’s negative view of her father. The symbolic description of her father as vampire and Nazi gives the audience a clear idea of Plath’s father, destroying her and sucking out her life. In direct contrast with Plath’s dark image, Harwood’s representation of her mother is full of admiration and love, ‘It is not for my children I walk on earth.../it is for you’. She doesn’t give a description of her mother in the way Plath does of her father, using a more indirect approach to create a general, yet
The poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath is a revenge poem about her father. Her father died when she was ten and she has been affected by that her whole life. She misses him a lot and she even tried to kill herself to get back to him, “At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you”(Plath). After she had failed at killing herself, Plath says “and then I knew what to do. I made a model of you” (Plath). She had married a man and modeled him after her father. Her husband abused her which did not make it any easier for her. Plath gets her revenge at the end of the poem because she says “if I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two” (Plath). This meant that if she killed her husband then that means she would have killed her father. Plath gets her
I feel the poem "Daddy" is a work of rage and powerlessness of her hate towards her father's death and then how she tried to control this rage by creating a new father in her husband. Her husband is seen in two metaphors, a Nazi and a vampire. The vampire "drank her blood", which shows his possessiveness over her. Which correlates once more to how her husband is a model of her father: they both confined her. The metaphor of Nazis brings an understanding of her personal pain and suppression.
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
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.
Over six million innocent lives were taken during the Holocaust. It had a significant effect on much of the world’s population, and it still has an impact to this day. In Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Daddy”, she shows her emotions for her father, Otto Plath. Sylvia Plath lost her father at eight years old when she still had much love for him (Famous People “Biography”). After a number of years, hatred is built up inside of Sylvia towards her father. When her father first died, she loved him and she grieved over her father’s death. After years of confusion, she eventually decided and wrote, “Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through” (Line 80). In “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath, the author resents her father and husband so much that they are comparable to Nazi Germans, showing her feelings for them through poetic devices.
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
Inspired by their true-life memories, Plath and Sexton explore a variety of themes in their poems. They both have different aspects of the relationship between a father and a daughter. The fathers in Sexton and Plath’s life had a major position and made an influence on their life and in their