Close Reading of Sylvia Plath's Daddy - Essay Example

Sylvia Plaths "Daddy The Ranging Conflict Between Love and Hate The poem "Daddy" is one of the most intense poems of the There was simplytoo much emotions and pains wrought between the lines of the poem. The symbolisms used by the author are so vivid that the reader can almost feel the great agony of the writer when she wrote the poem. At first glance, one can easily see that Sylvia Plaths "Daddy" is indeed a mean and brutal poem that talks about violence, hate, oppression and death. The language used by the speaker in the poem is rather intense and crude, albeit infantile or childlike bordering into being neurotic. You can almost see the speaker in the poem throwing tantrums at "daddy" blaming him for all her misfortunes. At best, the speaker in the poem did not attempt to hide her anger towards her father and her husband nor did she attempt to conceal her love for both men who tormented her and ruled her life for years. All throughout the poem, the speaker struggles to deal with her loss, her love and her hatred of her father. The speaker has unresolved issues against her father which she believed to be the root of all her sufferings and pain as an adult. Note that the speakers father died when she was ten so she never really had the chance to outgrow her fathers influence on her as most children do. In line 6 and 7 of the poem, the speaker said “Daddy, I have had to kill you / You died before I had time”. Her fathers death left a big hollow in the life of the speaker and she felt that even in death, her father still have influence over her. Actually, the idea of killing in the poem is more like a figure of speech. The speaker had always been scared of her father as a child and she wanted to get rid of the influence that her father had over her by "killing" her father. The idea of "killing" can be interpreted as "outgrowing" the influence of her father over her. Since her father died before she had the chance to breakaway from his domination, the speaker felt that she was trapped and unable to "kill" the feeling of being dominated. As the speaker in the poem reached adulthood, her feelings for her father remains almost childlike. If you take a closer look at the lyrics of the poem you will notice that the tone of the poem is purposely made childlike. Instead of addressing her father in a more formal tone that adults use, the speaker insistently called her father "daddy". At the time when this poem was written, adults usually refer to their fathers using the formal word "Father" and only little children venture to call their parents "mommy and daddy". What does this tells us? First, the childlike quality of the poem gives us a glimpse of how the speaker never really transcend emotionally from childhood to adulthood. The transition from childhood to adult involves emancipation from the control of the parent and since the speaker feels that she is still under the control and influence of her father, she remains a child within. In the second stanza of the poem, the speaker struggles with her hate and her love to her father. Here she describes her father as "bag full of God". The word "God" is used here to describe someone who commands full devotion and servitude. You cannot argue or talk back to a "God". A "Gods" word is the law and you cannot break it without suffering from grave consequences. If you go against the wishes of a "God" you expose yourself to the risk of eternal damnation. While talking about her father as like a God, she also pictures him as a "Ghastly statue with one gray toe" (see line 9). From the way she describes her father as a "God" we can see that beneath that hate and loathing that the speaker feels for her father, she bears a passionate love for her father. A "God" is someone that one always adores and looks up to. Even when the "God" appears to be cruel and vindictive, a good disciple of that "God" will still love him and worship at his feet. This love hate relationship between a "God" and a loyal disciple is something that the author wanted to portray in this poem. Here we see the conflicting emotions of love and hate. In the third stanza of the poem, the speaker says "And a head in the freakish Atlantic, Where it pours bean green over blue, In the waters off the beautiful Nauset, I used to pray to recover you, Ach, du." As a child, the speaker expresses her longing to "recover" her father. The lines of the poem actually echo the speakers overwhelming need to love and be loved in return. No matter how cruel the speaker thinks her father was, she still sees him as the central point of her life as a young girl. As the speaker grows older, her description of her father changed from being a "God" to being a swastika (46). The swastika is the symbol of the Nazis who sowed terror into the hearts of the Jewish people all over Europe during the holocaust. The speaker compared her relationship with her father with the relationship between the Jews and the Nazi during the holocaust. "I thought every German was you.... / An engine, an engine / Chuffing me off like a Jew. / A Jew to Dachau, Auchwitz, Belsen. / I began to talk like a Jew. / I think I may well be a Jew" (29-35).She portrays herself as the victim of violence and injustice with her own father as her tormentor. The speakers inability to break free from the influence of her father made her hate him even more. Yet, even as the speaker professes her hatred towards her father as an adult, she cannot help but love him still. Her love for her father is evident when she said “Every woman adores a Fascist / The boot in the face / The brute heart of a brute like you” (48-50). The speaker tried to commit suicide in the hope that she can get back at her father through death (“thought even the bones would do” (60). Unfortunately, she did not succeed in joining her father through death thus she tried another way to get back at her father by marrying a man who was just like her father. "I made a model of you, / A man in black with a Meinkampf look / And a love of the rack and the screw. / And I said I do, I do" (64-67). The use of the word "vampire" to symbolize her father and her husband is very important. A vampire symbolizes the living dead who live off on the blood of other people. By marrying a "vampire" who is just like her father, she also symbolically married her father. When the speaker finally left her husband after seven years, she figuratively left her father behind too. “Daddy, you can lie back now / There’s a stake in your fat black heart” (75-76). The act of putting a stake in the heart of the vampire is very relevant in this case. A vampire can only be killed by driving a stake through his heart. By driving a stake through her fathers heart, the speaker finally killed her father. In the last line of the poem, the speaker finally resolved her feelings towards her father when she said "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through." In conclusion, what made the poem so powerful is the way the writer uses metaphors and symbolisms to describe her pain and her anger. Through the use of symbols that are familiar to most readers, the writer is able to guide the imagination of the readers. By comparing her life to the life of a Jew during the holocaust, the writer creates a very frightening picture in the mind of the reader. Moreover, through repeated use of such words as "kill" "brute", vampire" and "black", the writer is able to create a sinister picture in the mind of the reader. Read More