Poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath - Essay Example

Throughout the poem, she has described her father through the depictions of God, Nazi as well as a vampire, in order to show the various sides and roles that he played in her life. The first stanza depicts the poor and painful lifestyle that Plath went through for the first twenty or so years of her life. She was forced to live within the realms of a poor household headed by her nonconforming father, as described by her as a ‘black shoe’ in order to depict her unhappiness. The poem also seems to be a nursery rhyme with the use of the black shoe.

In the next stanza she states that she wanted to kill her father however she then states that she did not have enough time to do the same because her father died much before she had expected him to be. The line ‘had time’ could then probably mean before she had time to get to know him better or make him proud about her, which makes her feel sad and repent on her loss. This stanza nonetheless depicts the kind of anger that Plath had within her because of the violent sentiment that she wanted to kill her father and get rid of him, even if it were just in her thoughts.

In the next stanza, she describes her father as being ‘marble heavy’ which may refer to a corpse or a gravestone. However, she then calls her father a ‘bag full of God’ which makes the readers believe that despite the heaviness of pain that she felt towards her father, she still regarded him to be her God and guiding light; like other children look up at their fathers for advice and look to them as their everything till a certain age, she did too, however, he probably betrayed her, leading her to the situation that she was in with respect to the turmoil of her feelings.

Either way, this line brings up another controversial aspect leading the readers to not comprehend whether or not her attitude and views towards God were positive or negative. This is because since her father has been depicted in a negative manner, she might have made an analogy with God in order to depict her negative feeling about God at the same time. In the following stanza, she calls her father ‘ghastly like a gargoyle’ as one may see in a marble statue. She describes the same as having a ‘big grey toe’ as big as a seal or a Frisco, and having a head all across the USA which may mean that the statue has influence all over the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

She then states that she wanted to regain a part of him for her personal self however she could not because of his so many engagements all over. Furthermore, her father has now been described to be the German immigrant that he was as Plath makes use of a number of German words, starting with ‘Ach, du.’ She then tries to talk about the birthplace of her father, a Polish town which was bulldozed by the effect of war, however as hard as she tries, she can never tell. She talks about making various efforts to talk to her father, however, never being able to focus on or succeed with the same.

This is because every time she tried, the thought of talking to her father would intimidate her to the extent of her tongue getting caught in her mouth, tangled up in barbed wire and making her feel nasty within. The repetition of