Love-Hate Conflict in Daddy by Sylvia Plath - Book Report/Review Example

First Sur Close Reading a poem and Thesis-Driven Essay Love-Hate Conflict in “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath “Daddy,” SylviaPlath’s poem that comprises sixteen five-line stanzas, is a venomous and brutal poem commonly comprehended to be about Sylvia’s deceased father named Otto Plath. The speaker in the poem is a lady who exhibits two character disposition towards her father. The woman loves her father passionately and hates him with an opposite magnitude. As a child, the speaker perceived her father as a God. Her perception drew her to an obsessive need to love and receive an equal measure of affection from the parent. On the contrary, the hatred arose from an intense and deep-rooted fear that she had towards her father. The negative disposition intensified due to the dominance in her life. As such she perceives her problems as resulted to by the parent. Sylvia uses similes, allegories, various types of rhymes as well as enjambment between stanzas in reinforcing the contrasting themes of love and hate. Sylvia uses allegories and similes when she makes references to the Nazi of Germany. In doing this, she directly compares her relationship with her father to the relationship between a Nazi and a Jew. There are many circumstances where the persona or the poet mentions the Nazi of Germany or makes statements that allude to the Nazi regime. The poet says, “Not God but a Swastika” (46). Swastika was a symbol associated with the Nazi Germany. Through referring to his father as a Swastika, he tends to associate him with the Nazi Germany. Therefore, she indirectly refers to the symbol of the Nazi to depict the weakening bond between her and her fathers as she grows old. Another instance where the author mentions Nazi Germany is when she uses it to refer to the fear that he had for her dad. The narrators’ fear of the father compares to the Jew’s fear of the Nazi in the period of the Holocaust. Even though the Nazi Germany is not mentioned directly, the following lines insinuate that the poet made a direct reference to the Nazi. When the speaker elucidates the relationship between the Nazi-Jew cases she explains, “I thought every German was you / and the language obscene. Chuffing me off like a Jew A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen” (29-32). Through making reference to the Auschwitz that had detention camp she touches on the issue is the Nazi Germany, who created the atrocities. The poem also uses nursery rhyme motif significantly to foster her message. In the very beginning, the poet mentions the lines, “You do not do” twice repeatedly. The verse portrays the seriousness of the narrator. She introduces the difficult or hard time that his father created. Additionally, the poet in describing his father says, “And your Aryan eye, bright blue” (43-45) The rhyme displays widespread evidence that the lady was not happy with his father. The descriptions she gives in the rhymes are negative and does not portray any good acts towards the father. Lastly, the author says, “They are dancing and stamping on you” (78). The statement is rather unusual as it means the people were celebrating the death of the tyrannical father. The poet also uses internal and end rhymes to help in fostering his message to the audiences. Specifically, she achieves this when she compares the husband to a vampire. She says in the two successive lines, “Seven years if you want to know/Daddy, you can lie back now” (72-74). The speaker in the poem married a man that had similarity to her father. Additionally, it is unfortunate that the nature of the two relationships is the same. She describes the spouse as a vampire who drank her blood for a duration of seven years. As if that comparison was not enough, the rhyme achieves credence of it expounds on the message of vampirism that the author introduced in the first line of the same stanza. She finds the word vampire fit for use as a vampire is usually a living dead. By telling the listeners that if they wanted to know and instructing the dad to lay back now means that the father was alive with the husband. Hence, the end rhyme, in this case, contributes to bringing the issue of the father that occurred in the past to the present day scenario. Earlier, the poet introduces how she accepted to get married to a man similar to her dad in terms of character disposition. She says in an internal rhyme, “and I said I do, I do” (64-67). In this scenario, internal rhyme depicts a decision made to enter into a tormenting relationship one that resemble the one that the poet had endured since childhood. Nevertheless, it tells much about how gullible people can become when it comes to making lifetime decisions. Also incorporated in the poem to build up its flow, is the enjambment between stanzas. Specifically, the author is keen not to interrupt the flow of the poem at the beginning of the very first, second and third stanzas. First, she uses the technique to introduce the first verse where she says, “you do not do/ any more black shoes” (1-2). It is key to notice that the author wants the audience to maintain the pace and flow in reading her past life. In The second and the third stanza, the poet uses a similar literary device. She desists from breaking from the description of the dad and proceeds all the way from the end of the second stanza to the begging of the third stanza. Hence, the audience can draw an understanding of the connection between the descriptive adjectives. Lastly, between the fourth and the fifth stanzas, the poet expresses what her Polack friend says in continuity. In conclusion, the author makes use of several literary devices to build up the message in her poem. Among the prominently used include similes, nursery rhyme motif, end rhymes, internal rhymes as well as enjambment between stanzas. In this manner, Sylvia’s poem remains a powerful and terrifying description of a mixed physiological paralysis consisting of hate and love that can ruin the life of an individual. Work Cited Sylvia, Plath. Daddy. 1965. Read More