Literary Analysis of Daddy by Sylvia Plath - Essay Example

Literary Analysis of the Poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath utilizes a confessional approach along with prominent tool and figure of world war history to render “Daddy” vividly effectual as it attempts to impart narrative about the two significant characters in her life. In reference to her father whose presence in her life has caused Plath to bear certain unresolved domestic struggles, the poet necessitates having to execute around terms that relate to her ethnicity being of Austrian-German descent. The poem basically evokes emotion of regret toward living under rigid circumstances with the man to whom the author’s existence is indebted and the remorseful attitude worsens as she figures that Daddy’s traits resemble those of the man she later marries only to encounter attachment to the former setting Sylvia has become tired of dealing with. As she opens her creation with “You do not do, you do not do / Any more, black shoe / In which I have lived like a foot / For thirty years”, Plath exhibits bitter remembrance of a mundane life where it appears mandatory to be a daughter and a wife altogether, serving a father and a husband who seem to have established high expectations of her on a regular basis. In the second stanza, the poet’s tone abruptly shifts to firm strict resolve with “Daddy, I have had to kill you” which is justified by the grounds of the third and fourth lines – “Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, / Ghastly statue with one gray toe.” Here, she readily decides to make mention of terms that she finds appropriate in describing her father in order for a reader to capture his image of austerity. Plath spreads the details of the father’s attributes throughout her piece for the reading audience to keep an intact recognition of the man who, by allusion, is compared to Adolf Hitler. While “Daddy” progresses to create a deeper notion either of cruelty or stiffness which forms close association between the two important figures involved, one may as well relate and imagine how seriously dull and traumatic it must have been for the speaker to be stuck in the shadows of the elderly man and his irrational deeds. Such is made more evident in phrase and word choice as – “In the German tongue”, “It stuck in a barb wire snare”, and “Chuffing me off like a Jew.” “Daddy” occurs to manifest irony when despite severities in the theme, Plath employs subtleness through rhyme schemes that vary in pattern from one stanza on to the next. For instance, by generating a certain rhythm in the repetition found at the second line of the sixth stanza “Ich, ich, ich, ich” that rhymes with “I could hardly speak” following it, the cheerful sounding combination becomes gradually contrasted by the meaning of “I thought every German was you.” Rhyming proceeds with some other word pairs – engine-Belsen, luck-pack, true-Jew, you-gobbledygoo, and screw-do. This way, one takes the ease of understanding the narrator’s pitch of sarcasm underlying the effort to keep her substance with some degree of modest composure which is all the more enhanced via the assonance somewhere in “bean green” and “Put your foot, your root.” On further reading, it would feel as if Sylvia reaches the triumph of losing a loved one yet getting accustomed to the past reality is haunting her. She considers herself a Jew and this metaphor rests upon the fact that it is still difficult for her to let go of the terrible loss during her tender youth when Daddy’s demise affects her to the point of great depression. It is not until her early adulthood that she begins convincing herself to acquire resolution through a quest for substitute that is bound to fill in sad yearnings regardless of the consequences. By claiming “At twenty I tried to die / And get back, back, back to you”, the daughter may be found in an irony of getting fed up with the critical situations of the past but manages to reserve for it an amount of sentiment for longing since it inevitably embeds itself in her state of consciousness and affectionate concerns. By the last quarter of the piece, Plath seeks relief and liberation from desperate thoughtfulness which to her rather implies dying and this she carries out by allowing another man, her husband Ted Hughes, to enter her world and help her afford to get over the previous Daddy. She goes hence to admit “And a love of the rack and the screw. / And I said I do, I do” to signify the new chapter of life which Plath hopes to possess the capacity of curing pains in days of old. Just when she believes, however, that the conflict with her father is done with, she discovers only a brief transition of wonder and the typical manner she lives by the ages behind repeats like no great deal of necessary change is yielded at. With cold directness, Plath likens a blood-sucking ‘vampire’ to Hughes with whom she happens to tie the knot and spends the seven years of her already weary existence. The poet eventually plunges into immediate lack of rhythm on conveying a tone of rebellion over such time span in which marital relationship does not quite work out with the fellow poet. This failure serves not only hurt and freedom from every aspect of thought with her late father who is seemingly assumed the husband’s counter-“equivalent” but even the life-transforming realization that one cannot remain engaged or live according to the dictates of the unpleasant past. Thus, Plath ends with a biting last-liner that points to Hughes in an ordinary yet resolute angst – “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” The poem’s ending may be perceived a tragedy due to regretful emotion about circumstances that come rigid for the woman Plath is on dealing with crucial roles of being a daughter and a wife, knowing that both men reflect those characteristics she provides discussion of in the middle of her work. On the contrary, one may as well determine the positive version of the outcome on treating the decision of the speaker especially if the act of quitting or discontinuing the marriage is worth her passage and security from dwelling with the horrible ghosts of years bygone which could barely depart from her. Read More