Critical Analysis of Sylvia Plath's Daddy - Essay Example

“Daddy,” according to the argument presented by Strangeways, is a political poem which portrays the holocaust and oppression in deeply subjective, personalised and emotive terms. Narbeshuber contends that critics have misinterpreted both Plath’s “Daddy and “Lady Lazarus” as journeys into the poet’s own tortured and troubled psyche. This is not true. “Daddy,” as with the other mentioned poem, constitutes a declaration of rebellion against the standardized and acceptable images of the female and her relationship with the men in her life.

Society and culture have imposed certain behaviors on the female, all of which insist that she be submissive, beautiful and soft spoken. In “Daddy” Plath declares her rejection of these images and behaviors through outright rebellion. Therefore, this poem should not be read as one which reveals the poet’s own troubled psyche and weakness but as one which declares her strength and independence of societal images and stereotypes. Frye argues that Olsen’s short story is not only an exploration of the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship, as the majority of critics have maintained but, an exploration of the complexities of the mother’s own memories and psyche.

In its exploration of the mother’s past, Frye establishes a correlation between the past and the present, illustrating the extent to which the latter is immediately influenced and determined by the former. Frye contends that the authenticity of this story and the extent to which the mother’s memories come across as true leads to the suspicion that this story is an examination of Olsen’s own self. Cox argues that the story exposes the emptiness which dominates the lives of teenagers and which causes them to lose their way, both in the literal and figurative senses of the word.

As she contends, the title of the story is not just indicative of its primary theme but instructs readers to interpret the