Daddy by Sylvia Plath - Essay Example

"Daddy" by Sylvia Plath. How does the language in the poem reveal what you think the poem is all about What is your opinion of that main idea Why do you believe as you do Daddy was written by Sylvia Plath in the last months of her life before she committed suicide at the tragically young age of thirty-one. The poem is "about" Plath's tortured relationship with her father, which she embodies through using the metaphor of him being a Nazi and she a part-Jewish girl who hates and yet adores him. Of course, Plath's father was not literally a Nazi, but rather she uses this image to explain her deeply conflicted feelings regarding the man. The major theme of the poem is that Plath needed to create an image of her father that fitted the childhood memories of him that have haunted her into adulthood. Plath's father died when she was eight, and the poet herself stated that the poem is about a woman (presumably herself) who is plagued by an Electra complex regarding her father that she cannot entirely admit to. The Electra complex is the female equivalent of the Oedipus complex, and involves a girl wanting to make love to her own father. This theme of unrequited love and hatred is reflected within the language of the poem that starts with two seemingly enigmatic lines: "You do not do, you not do/ Any more, black shoe" (Plath, 1-2), and continues with the fact that she has had to wear this "shoe" for thirty years, The "shoe" in this case is apparently Plath's life which, as a reader today knows, she is about to end. The second stanza starts with two lines that are both shocking and yet ironic, as Plath states that "Daddy, I have had to kill you./ You died before I had time." (Plath, 6-7). Plath casts a decidedly modern context upon the age-old conflict between parents and children. In the modern age the father has died before his time and so Plath essentially has to "kill" him through the words of her poetry. The image of Germany and eventually of Nazism appears with the end of the third stanza and the inclusion of "ach, du", which translates to "ah, you". Much of the rest of the poem explores this "daddy as Nazi and Sylvia s Jew" context in a number of ways. She first imagines that her father looks at least a little like Hitler, "and you neat moustache, / and you Aryan eye, bright blue", and continues with the remarkable assertion of a kind of sexual obsession with the man. Thus Plath states: Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute, Brute heart of a brute like you. According to Plath women are turned on in some manner by the kind of cruelty exhibited by this kind of man. Near to the middle of the poem she states that there is a normality to this vision of "daddy", so he has "ac left in your chin instead of your foot", showing that he looks like a normal human being rather than a cloven-hoofed devil. Plath's previous suicide attempt is linked to her Daddy, as well as the fact that she may have been raped. Her attempt to kill her self at twenty was, according to the poem, an attempt to "get back, back, back to you." The repetition of the word "back" shows how futile the attempt was but how it still is a constant matter within her mind. If Daddy, along with the other poems in the book "Ariel" can be seen as a kind of extended suicide note, then this central part of the poem suggests that part of the reason for her death may have been this longing to be with her father. Of course going backwards in time is possible, so Plath takes the next bets thing, "I thought even the bones would do". As the poem nears an end, Plath starts to compare her father to a vampire, stating that "if I've killed one man, I've killed to." This can be explained by the fact that a vampire, in order to be a vampire, must have once died. Then, if one kills the vampire, he has been killed twice. The last stanza of the poem takes the reader into a vampire novel or film in which the "villagers never liked you" and have put a "stake in you fat black heart". The final line of the poem, "daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through,"" may be taken in a number of ways. It may be a dismissal of "daddy" as though she has been talking to him all along. It may be the fact that she has simply nothing more to say to the reader, as she is disgusted with the whole subject. It may be, in the darkest interpretation, the fact that Plath is indeed "through" with everything, as her imminent suicide suggests. In conclusion, Daddy is a disturbing but often quite funny poem that explores a tortured relationship of a depressed, suicidal woman with a "daddy" that she never really knew. Plath creates an image of the man within her imagination and uses it to fulfill her rather dark view of humanity. Daddy may also explore her relationship with Ted Hughes, her husband who was also a famous poet and who had just left her when the poem was written. Hughes was known to be very cruel (in an emotional sense) to women, and yet was incredibly attractive to them. In a sense then the desire to make love to "daddy" as expressed through the Electra complex, may actually be the disgust that she has made love with Hughes, and borne two of his children, only for him to leave her when he got bored and met another woman. Many different interpretations of this poem are possible, and none of them is the only one "correct one" - rather the poem speaks to different people in different ways depending on their experience. _________________________________________ Read More