Analysis of the poem daddy by sylvia plath. Daddy Poem by Sylvia Plath (Summary and Analysis) 2022-11-07
Analysis of the poem daddy by sylvia plath Rating:
6,7/10
1208
reviews
Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" is a deeply personal and emotional poem that reflects the complex relationship the speaker had with her father. Through the use of vivid imagery and powerful language, Plath conveys the pain, anger, and resentment she felt towards her father, who passed away when she was a young child.
One of the most striking aspects of the poem is the use of metaphors and symbols to represent the speaker's feelings towards her father. The speaker compares her father to a Nazi, calling him a "ghastly statue" and a "gray, out of focus photograph." This comparison suggests that the speaker saw her father as a cold and oppressive figure who had a significant impact on her life, even after his death.
Additionally, the speaker compares herself to a victim of the Holocaust, saying that she has "been a puppet, a Jewish girl" and that she has "been the foot" that "has never danced." This metaphor highlights the speaker's feelings of powerlessness and helplessness in relation to her father. It also suggests that the speaker saw herself as a victim of her father's abuse, both emotional and physical.
Throughout the poem, the speaker grapples with the complicated emotions she feels towards her father. On one hand, she expresses a deep love for him, saying that she "loved you" and that she "wanted to do it all right." On the other hand, she also expresses anger and resentment towards him, saying that she "never could talk to you" and that she "had to kill you." This ambivalence reflects the complex and often tumultuous relationship the speaker had with her father.
In conclusion, "Daddy" is a poignant and powerful poem that explores the complicated feelings the speaker had towards her father. Through the use of vivid imagery and powerful language, Plath conveys the pain, anger, and resentment the speaker felt towards her father, as well as the deep love and admiration she had for him.
Poem Analysis of “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath : The Poetic Weight of Histor
Fear from her childhood moves her in directions that will take her far from herself. Out of her need for a paternal figure and as a result of her unresolved issues because her father died when she was so young, she is now connected to a new man who is just like him. It is what one might expect from an angry child or in an incantation—single-syllable words repeated with a single-minded purpose. Some critics believe that this is symbolic of the fall of Hitler and his government, and the rejoicing that followed thereon. Thus she ended the life of a most promising, eloquent and daring poet of the century.
And then I knew what to do. Buy Study Guide Summary "Daddy," comprised of sixteen five-line stanzas, is a brutal and venomous poem commonly understood to be about Plath's deceased father, The speaker begins by saying that he "does not do anymore," and that she feels like she has been a foot living in a black shoe for thirty years, too timid to either breathe or sneeze. Death The narrator of the poem has suffered a great setback due to the sudden and untimely death of her father. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. More than the lexical meaning, it is the sound of the words that communicates the emotional range of the speaker. I think I may well be a Jew. The poem has a variety of tones created by broken sentences, incomplete sentences, sentences without main verb, repetition of certain words, use of German words.
Then she again calls herself a Jew, with a gypsy ancestress, who has not been specified. Plath was only ten when her German-born father died. Sylvia Plath was famous for creating such honest pieces of work, and her personal life reflected in most of her poems. There are hard sounds, short lines, and repeated rhymes as in "Jew," "through," "do," and "you". It takes on the power of an engine. She wonders in fact, whether she might actually be a Jew, because of her similarity to a gypsy. Tone The tone of the poem is bitter, angry, and contemptuous.
At twenty, she tries to commit suicide—presumably in order to join him in death, this man she hated and longed for—but she is revived, brought back. Daddy, the person, is or seems to be a Nazi. Plath has the speaker represent the victimized millions as well as an unfulfilled and violently unhappy individual who found a kind of ultimate success as an artist but also wished from the start to destroy herself, as Plath herself would do several months after writing the poem, when she died from suicide by asphyxiation. She even wrote a novel named The Bell Jar, which is another such acclaimed creation. From this it follows that she herself lacks roots. However, some critics have suggested that the poem is actually an allegorical representation of her fears of creative paralysis, and her attempt to slough off the "male muse. It uses harsh, insistent rhyme to hammer its message home.
She then lists the other things that might make her Jewish: her Romani ancestry, her strange luck, and her tarot cards. Introduced as a worshiped and scorned god-cadaver-statue, the paternal image is modulated and degenerated into the image of a viciously racist, sadistically misogynistic Nazi. Further Reading Aird, Eileen. And yet its ambivalence towards male figures does correspond to the time of its composition - she wrote it soon after learning that her husband Ted Hughes had left her for another woman. Plath explained the poem briefly in a BBC interview: The poem is spoken by a girl with an Electra complex. Overall, the poem relates Plath's journey of coming to terms with her father's looming figure; he died when she was eight. But, she says, it is a very common name, as her Polish friend has told her.
The feminist theme continues into the succeeding image of the father as teacher-devil, as traditional gender roles would typically represent, as complementary images, male tutors and untutored females. Cite this page as follows: "Daddy - Commentary" Masterpieces of American Literature Ed. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. However, even this interpretation begs something of an autobiographical interpretation, since both Hughes and her father were representations of that world. The house was very old; the telephone was not working, and the poet was not in touch with the outside world.
By the end of the play when he thought that his step mother murdered his father not his son he said "But we got to do something quick to make it look as if he skunked himself. Daddy Poem by Sylvia Plath Most people remember Sylvia Plath for her She has a remarkable talent for putting some of the most difficult feelings into words. She knows he comes from a Polish town that was overrun by "wars, wars, wars," but one of her Polack friends has told her that there are several towns of that name. There are numerous autobiographical elements in the poem. Nauset is an area that now encompasses Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. And then, the narrator says, she knew what to do, like finally obtaining an answer to a long drawn-out dilemma. The tongue stuck in my jaw.
Plath also refers to the Polish origin of her father, Otto Plath. Boone is not the only one who broke trust in their relationship, Mr. It was as though her tongue were stuck in a trap made of barbed wire. The penultimate patriarchal image appears in stanza 11: father as teacher-cum-devil. When she remembers Daddy, she thinks of him standing at the blackboard, with a cleft chin instead of a cleft foot. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. When she was 20, she tried to commit suicide so that she could finally be reunited with him.
