Father-Daughter Conflict and Eternal Angst in Plaths Daddy - Book Report/Review Example

March 25, Father-Daughter Conflict and Eternal Angst in Plath’s “Daddy” Dark Thoughts will enjoy the inspiration from a poem that is utterly graphic about fatherhood angst and inner death. Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” fits the band’s demand for dark, dangerous, creative, confrontational, and alienation-existentialist-angst music because it speaks of a deep-seated anger and estrangement that cannot be resolved. The poem is part of the Confessional Movement, where Plath seems to be confessing her personal feelings and ideas about her German immigrant father in particular (Leondopoulos 1). The speaker of the poem is a daughter who speaks in first person. She wants to understand and resolve her problems with her authoritarian father, who died when she was only eight years old (“Sylvia Plath”). The theme is unresolved patriarchal obsession. “Daddy” shows how a dead strict father can continuously influence his daughter through turning her into an eternal angst-ridden victim because he took away the freedom to shape her individual identity. The father figure in the poem is an ideal example of an authoritarian father who has figuratively stamped fear into the heart of his little daughter, who, afterwards, feels little in her self-assessment of who she is. The first five lines describe how she lives in a shoe: “You do not do, you do not do/Any more, black shoe/ In which I have lived like a foot/ For thirty years, poor and white,/ Barely daring to breathe or Achoo” (Plath 1-5). By repeating the lines “you do not do,” it shows how her father is the central figure in her life, who dictates what she can or cannot do. The words “any more, black shoe” can represent his black shoe that stamps her down, which creates the feeling that she is in a black shoe herself, or someone who is put inside the confines of her father’s authority (Leondopoulos 1). He has alienated her from her capacity for independence and freedom because of his tyrannical rules. The speaker lives in a foot, particularly, under the foot of her father’s demands and controls, yet she says she has been living like this for thirty years. The effect is that, even when her father is dead, his commands and rules continue to affect her, how she sees herself as a person and how she sees others, especially men (Leondopoulos 1). The angst it must create, knowing that her childhood experiences damaged her so horribly that she cannot breathe or sneeze without feeling the disapproval of her dead father. Daddy broke her spirit and mind, and the consequences are deep and self-destructive. Apart from the stamping effect of her father on her life, violence is figurative and dark in the poem, underscoring the ghastly menace of tyranny and how it permanently kills the human spirit. The daughter is not as little as she feels with her father gone, and instead, vengeance is possible. She says: “Daddy, I have had to kill you” (Plath 6). She feels the urgency of killing the one who killed her, while she is still alive. She is ready to confront him and clash with him head on. Unfortunately, he dies before she can have her revenge: “You died before I had time--/ Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,/ Ghastly statue with one gray toe/ Big as a Frisco seal” (Plath 7-10). The images of his father continue to haunt her, in the absence of her sweet revenge. These images feel like actual heavy objects crushing her. She wants to confront him, but these big images of a godly father still terrify her. The one gray toe might be evidence of Plath’s father who suffered from diabetes. Still, she sees her as an imposing figure, a “ghastly statue” whose largeness is reinforced by his illness. It does not matter if he is ill or if he would die, for his legacy of terror lives on inside her mind. No matter how much the speaker hates her father and wants to kill him though, their loving bond remains, which must be infuriating, considering how she fears him these conflicting emotions are continuous sources of existential angst. She provides contrasting images of fear and love for her father: “And a head in the freakish Atlantic/ Where it pours bean green over blue/ In the waters off beautiful Nauset./ I used to pray to recover you./ Ach, du” (Plath 11-15). Her father is a freakish large head because he is dead and he lives on through his presence in his daughter’s life; his mind is inside her mind. Beautiful colors suddenly change the scene because of “bean green” that seems peaceful over the blue waters of the “beautiful Nasset.” These waters are cool colors that pacify the angry heart of the speaker. She even prays for him to recover from his sickness. She says “Ach, du” which means “Oh, you!” Her existence is damned because of her father, but it is also incomplete without him. What a dilemma indeed for a broken human being! She cannot exist with or without him. While she prays for him, the speaker continues to speak about the possible sources of her father’s authoritarian attitudes and behaviors, which is innovative because not all angst expressions seek further historical and contextual analysis. Her father is German, which means he is exposed to the violence and inhumanity of wars: “In the German tongue, in the Polish town/ Scraped flat by the roller/ Of wars, wars, wars./ But the name of the town is common./ My Polack friend” (Plath 16-20). The German tongue and Polish culture might just be some of the reasons that create the gulf of division between her and her father. Wars must have also affected his thinking and behaviors, creating a violent controlling obsession. The name of the town that is common can signify that such violent incidences and situations should not be reason to be a tyrannical figure to young children. He should have been friendlier, to change what he has come from. But apparently, he becomes a monstrous figure of Hitler himself. She cannot find the words, being not a German speaker, to connect to her father: “Says there are a dozen or two./ So I never could tell where you/ Put your foot, your root,/ I never could talk to you./The tongue stuck in my jaw” (Plath 21-25). There are dozens of Germans but he seems to be different, he cannot seem to come from something more distinct, as she refers to his roots. She cannot talk to him because of language differences and fear for him. Her tongue cannot move, perhaps her father has cut it out by always admonishing her. How can she assert her freedom and identity if she cannot speak for herself? And if she does muster the courage, can her father understand where she is coming from? Apparently, he cannot, because his roots and experiences are different from hers. The difficulties of speech are further explored in lines 26 to 30: “It stuck in a barb wire snare./ Ich, ich, ich, ich,/ I could hardly speak./ I thought every German was you./ And the language obscene” (Plath 26-30). The words ich, ich, seems to be onomatopoeic of a tongue stuck in a barb wire. The barb-wired-tongue is a bloody image of speechlessness, of the freedom to express oneself. The fact that Germans start to look like her father is excruciating. When she hears German, she hears and feels her father’s oppressive presence. She continues to feel oppressed and small. The speaker further sees herself as a Jewish victim to further capture the sea of alienation that she feels from her father. Plath begins imagining herself as a Jew in the Holocaust: “An engine, an engine/Chuffing me off like a Jew./ A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen./ I began to talk like a Jew./ I think I may well be a Jew” (Plath 31-35). The engine refers to the trains that bring Jews to concentration camps, to slave labor or death. She becomes a Jew who talks like one and she thinks she is- these feelings and language underlie the depth of psychological victimization that she feels. Her father has castigated her as an inferior- he, a German, she, a Jew. Their relationship is that of the superior-inferior, human-object, and up to now, that relationship makes her feel little, a little Jew who cannot protect herself and become a true independent happy person. She talks about her fear of him, and to some degree, how she belittles him: “I have always been scared of you,/ With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo./ And your neat mustache/ And your Aryan eye, bright blue./ Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You” (Plath 41-45). She is terrified of him, but he is also “gobbledygook,” a form of making fun of his high view of himself. Nevertheless, his superior physical appearance dominates her, from his mustache, to his eyes, and his entire bearing. She says “O you” now, instead of “Ach, du.” She might be feeling power by speaking in English, but the tentative tone suggests uncertainty in her ability to fight her father’s control. The feeling of power does not stay because her father is too strong a presence and influence in her life that she eventually marries him, rather, a version of him, who also terrorizes her, but whom she kills. She marries someone like his father, intelligent, but also overbearing and controlling: “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./ So daddy, Im finally through” (Plath 64-68). She made a model of her father, a sick sense of needing him through marrying him, as Oedipus did. She thinks that by marrying her father, she can resolve her Oedipal obsession. As she says: “If Ive killed one man, Ive killed two—“ (Plath 71). She thinks she can kill her husband and that kills her father too. But he had the same Meinkampf look, who loves the rack and screw that can symbolize intelligence and being controlling of every part of the speaker. He becomes a vampire of her life instead (Plath 72). The vampire symbolizes as someone who sucked her life away. She drives a stake to her husband’s heart, which is also her father’s heart (Plath 76). She later dreams of villages dancing around his dead body: “And the villagers never liked you./ They are dancing and stamping on you./ They always knew it was you./ Daddy, daddy, you bastard, Im through” (Plath 77-80). The villagers can represent the different parts of her that died because of her father’s control. The last line can be interpreted differently. She might say she is moving on because she has finally killed him, or, as Plath did, she is through with life and commits suicide. Either way, the poem ends with a sad, bitter, victorious tone. Fathers are major issues for many people who have lasting conflicts with their fathers. The speaker of “Daddy” inspires Dark Thoughts to talk about their father angst because their fathers destroyed them for good. The anger continues with revenge that never actually materializes with benefits of redemption. Freedom that is taken away cannot be restored by bitter broken minds and spirits. Works Cited Leondopoulos, Jordan. “Daddy.” Masterplots II: Poetry (2002): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. Plath, Sylvia. “Daddy.” 1962. Poets.org. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. “Sylvia Plath.” Poets.org 2014. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. Read More