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.
In Plath’s poem she frequently uses figurative language about Nazis and the Holocaust. Plath depicts herself as a victim by saying she is like a Jew, and her father is like a Nazi. Plath uses a train engine as a metaphor for her father speaking the German Language, and also to depict herself as a victimized Jew being taken away to a concentration camp.
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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.
Plath uses the symbol of a vampire to describe her father’s personality. At the end of the poem Plath shifts the depiction of her father from a living Nazi to a dead vampire. “The vampire who said he was you / And Drank my blood for years” (Plath 73-74). Here Plath bluntly calls her father a vampire who has sucked her blood for years. The metaphor of a blood sucking vampire is used to help paint a vivid image of the pain in Plath’s relationship. Plath again describes her father as a vampire who has died with a stake through his heart. “There’s a stake in your fat black heart / And the villagers never liked you. / They are dancing and stamping on you” (Plath 76-79). Along with showing the father dying a vampire’s death, the metaphoric villagers dancing
Over 5 million people died between 1933 and 1945. Additionally, around half of these deaths happened in a concentration camp. This point in time is commonly referred to as the Holocaust. In Elie Wiesel’s book "Night” that documents Elie Wiesel’s struggles in a ghetto and then being transported throughout Germany to these awful places that are made for death. However, in the novel “Night,” Elie Wiesel uses dialog, ellipses, and symbolism to show the bond he has with his father. (73)
The Holocaust claimed millions of lives , and the survivors witnessed an event incomprehensible to the remainder of humanity. Elie Wiesel, a burdened survivor of the Genocide, describes his own experiences in his autobiographical memoir Night. Throughout the years in the concentration camps, Wiesel and the other Jews witness countless events of Nazis intentionally dehumanizing the Jews. After hearing these brutal remarks for years, Wiesel begins to internalize these thoughts. His internalization is reflected in his writing as he often compares himself and the others to animals. He compares the Jew’s physical traits, but also the way in which they act. Elie Wiesel animalizes the Jews while personifying darkness to further dehumanize the Jews and show how the Nazi’s mental warfare continues to affect him.
When a person recalls an emotional situation, it can be difficult for them to explain to others exactly how they felt when the event occurred. Authors attempt to communicate these tough experiences using a variety of literary devices—which include symbolism, irony, and theme. Night by Elie Wiesel, and First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung are two pieces of literature that recollect the memories of the authors during traumatic events; Night is set during the Holocaust, while the latter is set in Cambodia during the harsh rule of Pol Pot. The literary devices present in each text are utilized by Wiesel and Ung in unique and similar ways to communicate the extent of what they felt .
The holocaust can be regarded as one of the most awful events in history and the swastika continues to be a constant reminder of the horrendous acts of hate that were bestowed onto human lives. More than 1 million people were brutally murdered at the hands of an evil dictator named Adolf Hitler. Some of the vivid events and actions that took place during this time have been highlighted in the poem “The Trains” written by William Heyen. Heyen discusses the trains of Treblinka which carried the prized possessions of the many people who had been dropped off to death and/or concentration camps. In the poem, the author attempts to appeal to audiences of the 21st century around the world who do not fully understand the horrific incidents that occurred during the holocaust and the tragedy inflicted on its victims.
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.
The poem is rich in the images of the senses which aid the reader to imagine this terrible massacre. By employing an auditory image in “Babies wailing from hunger” (8), Kimel evokes sympathy. The Nazis even tortured those innocent babies who needed nothing but tenderness. He also uses an organic image in “Fathers shaken with helpless rage” (10), which depicts the complete sense of loss of control, fear and rage that the Jews suffered from.
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.
Plath starts her poem out negatively, ‘barely daring to breathe or Achoo’, with a distinct repetition of the ‘oo’ sounds in ‘Achoo’, ‘do’, ‘shoe’ and ‘du’ creating a childlike, nursery rhyme style of delivery that contrasts greatly with the violent and dark themes. Harwood begins on a significantly more positive if wistful note, ‘forgive me the wisdom I would not learn from you’ positioning her mother as a wise and positive influence. The tones of the poems are very different, as shaped by the poet’s experiences with their parents, with Harwood creating an affirmative, loving description of her relationship with her mother while Plath develops a much darker and sinister view s.
Beginning with the title, Plath takes a clear point of view as a Jewish person in the Holocaust. The Lazarus of Bethany, who was raised from the dead by Jesus, is the first allusion Plath incorporates. Lady Lazarus is a play on the Lazarus of Bethany, as Plath feels as if she has died several times from her failed suicide attempts, which she explains in the beginning of the poem. She believes she has tainted every decade of her life with an unsuccessful attempt, and can’t seem to go ten years without a new one. In the second stanza, she begins to introduce her allusions to the Holocaust and German Nazis, but not before she explains that she is
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
These images and allusions to horrific crimes against humanity do an excellent job of creating an image of death as a horrible, painful thing. Plath alludes to the burning of the Jews in large ovens, burning them down to ash, so that nothing was left but “gold fillings,” and a “wedding ring,” as well as makes reference to another disturbing report that some Nazi soldiers made soap out of the Jew’s as well as lampshades. These terrible images are designed to paint a wretched view of death. Interestingly enough, these images and ideas that death is a horrible, bad thing runs contrary to the speakers actual feelings that death is a great way to escape life, and in the end it is all she (the speaker) really wants to do.
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.
On the other hand, her father died when she was ten and she still saw him as this massive man standing at the blackboard with a cleft chin and a soft heart, but as she grew older, she became more aware of her father’s truth. He was a Nazi who spent his days working to round up Jews and working under Hitler. For the rest of her life, she racked her brain