Plath’s Daddy Essay: Father and Husband as Vampires

The character Mary Katherine Blackwood from Shirley Jackson’s book We Have Always Lived In The Castle has quite a few of the same issues going on in her life as the problems presented in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy”. Three of the most prominent issues that are shared between these two individuals are the feeling of mistreatment by parental figures, the almost vampiric draining of the life out of the individual by an authority figure, and the draining ability the authority figure has on the community around them. This kind of individual is referred to as a life draining vampire in Plath’s poem.

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.

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.

Plath’s father’s untimely death left her with an unhealthy sort of codependency, resulting in a skewed image of relationships in general. In Plath’s poem “Daddy”, the speaker details their relationship with their father as that between a Jewish person and a Nazi. The speakers describes the fear they experience in junction with their father. The speaker further elaborates on their father’s death when they were young, and that despite the deep resentment the speaker feels for their father, how it affected them deeply. Plath’s own father died when she was eight, and although he was a distant figure in her life due to his illness, she, too, was deeply moved by his death, relating back to the poem (Alexander, 32). What hurt Sylvia most about her father’s

The two protagonists in the story share many similar traits, but also are very different.

The speaker believe that her father was also a godly figure as she refers to him as “marble heavy” and a “ statue”, but she feels it necessary that she kills him.

Although what stands out in Sylvia Plath’s poem "Daddy" is the Nazi imagery, it is interesting to note that the father is not called a Nazi in the first half of the poem. In the first stanza he is a "black shoe / In which [she has] lived like a foot" (2-3) which is certainly a stifling image but not yet a clear reference to the father's evil nature. Next he is "Marble heavy, a bag full of God" and a "Ghastly statue"

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.

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.

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

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.

Many people view poems and other pieces of writing in different ways, there is no wrong or right way to interpret a work of someone, it merely your point of view; your opinions. In Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy”, many could say that it was a about a hard relationship she had with her father, but how do we know? It could be about her father, husband, strong authority figure, or even God. But, as I read “Daddy” I got the strong sense that it was mostly about her father. The poem suggests that she had either an unhealthy relationship with him or she was angry with him for leaving her. In the poem, Plath says “I have always been scared of you” (41); I view this as she may not have had the best relationship with him. Maybe he was abusive or mean.

Plath felt oppressed and stifled by men throughout her life. The first stanza of “Daddy” conveys her feelings of domination by her father:

“Daddy” written by Sylvia Plath an American poet best known for her dark, and confessional poems, and novels. Sylvia Plath lets you understand her thoughts through her writing, for example poems like “Daddy” and her novel The Bell Jar. More and more people learn about her work by reading her poetry or novels today. For one reason, this poem gives many emotions to the reader. By reading “Daddy” you can sense sadness, hopefulness, a broken child, while others may argue it is a cry for help. Secondly, Sylvia Plath casts herself as a victim by sharing all the negative feelings she experienced after her father’s dead. Lastly, Plath expresses how she portraits her father as a powerful figure, especially when Plath refer him as a Nazi, German, Frisco, and vampire. I feel this poem is very powerful because you can feel the writer’s emotions towards her father and including herself worth. In the poem “Daddy” it projects the emotions Sylvia Plath was trying to share with the reader. Poems like these can help other people deal with their negative feelings, by realizing they are not the only ones dealing with negative thoughts, and searching for the help they may need in case of a crisis.

Sylvia Plath’s Daddy is addressed to the speaker’s father. The speaker describes the father as a looming, unhuman force that stifles her. She introduces him as being the “black shoe / In which I have lived like a foot / For thirty years , poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo”. Her characterization of him being a looming, oppressive force is further reinforced by her description of him as a “marble-heavy… ghastly statue with one gray toe / Big as a Frisco seal / And a head in the freakish Atlantic.” In her mind, he is a giant statue that stretches across the continent. She also calls him “a bag of God” but, given her negative portrayal of him, saying he is full of God is most likely an indication of his ego and power, not virtue. Plath talks about his appearance, saying there was “a cleft in your chin instead of your foot,” but he is “no less a devil for that,” an allusion to the Satan who is often depicted as having hooves instead of feet. The speaker shows no recognition of her father’s humanness nor moral nuance; he is but an evil force that oppresses her.