Analysis of Daddy by Sylvia Plath

Anna Fink ENGL 210-0824T Essay 1 Schumacher Daddy by Sylvia Plath The definition of puzzle is a male parent. For some people the word let goes lots deeper than that. A military chaplain is someone who protects you and loves you, gives you guidance and advice, and is the one person you can always count on. But for some people a father is further when that, a male parent a person you barely know, or a person you have come to fear. In Sylvia Plaths poem, Daddy, she tells a cooling description of a man whom she compares to Hitler, a man who is her daddy. In the poem Daddy, the speaker system system unfolds a worrisome description of a father.Plath uses elements that we see happened in her real life and also events of the most horrific mass murder in the worlds history, the Holocaust. Many different metaphors are utilise to describe the family the speaker had with her father a swastika, a Nazi, like God, and a vampire. The speaker describes herself as a victim, referring to her self as a Jew. The speaker is not necessarily a Jew but she wants the reader to see the relationship she had with her father to be like the relationship between a Nazi (her father) and a Jew (herself).In the poem the speaker duologue of revenge and pour downing her father and also killing her husband. The climactic part of the poem is the speaker finally telling her father that she is by dint of with him. In the first off stanza the speaker describes her father as a disastrous shoe that she has been living in her whole life and how she is not going to live that way anymore. In these lines For thirty old age, poor and white, / Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. (4-5) you can see the fear that the speaker lived in for thirty years. She was too scared of her father to even sneeze.In stanzas two and three is where the speaker introduces the audience to the idea that she has killed her father. Daddy I have had to kill you. / You died before I had time(6-7). Here it is unclear as to whether the speaker actually killed her father because he died before she had time to do something. The speaker could be saying that she killed her father but only in her mind. I used to pray to recover you / Ach, du (14-15). The speaker says recover you which means regain beings she tries to get her father back into her life, but when she says used to the impression is she no longer needs or wants her father in her life. Ach, du is German meaning Oh, you but it is unclear as to whether the speaker is angry or sad. (Shmoop, 2013). Stanzas four through six describe the Polack town where the speakers father came from, but lines (19-23) But the name of the town is common / My Polack friend / Says there are a dozen or two. / So I could never tell where you / Put your foot, your root, the speaker explains that she will never know where her father came from. The speaker continues on into the German language and how it terrified her because it reminded her of her father.She says how she could barely speak around him and The tongue stuck in my jaw. / It stuck in a barb wire snare. (25-26) describes how painful it was to maunder to her father or in German. I thought every German was you. / And the language obscene (29-30). Here the speaker sees every German as her father and how language disturbs her. The speaker has terrible memories of her father. (Shmoop, 2013). The speaker then begins to compare herself to a Jew and describes the relationship between her father as that of a Jew and a Nazi in lines (34-35), I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The fear and terror she experiences around her father is very disturbing because of the metaphor she uses. The speaker uses the next stanza to describe her fathers appearance. She has always feared him and his German characteristics his language, the German air force. His neat mustache and blue eye (43-44). A mustache iconic of Hitlers and blue eye referring to the ideal human race of blue-eyed blonde s that Hitler was trying to create. (Shmoop, 2013). I was ten when they buried you. / At twenty dollar bill when I tried to die / And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. (57-60). The speakers father died when she was ten and ten years later she tried to kill herself. Sylvia Plath also tried to kill herself when she was about twenty years old. The speaker, respectable like Plath, did not succeed. The speaker tried to kill herself in hopes to get closer to her father. She thinks that by dying their spirits or at least their bones will be together. (Shmoop, 2013). After the speaker had healed she decided what she needed to do next was make a model of her father. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, (63-64). Now she doesnt mean a physical model, but a person. She decided to marry a man like her father. The speaker describes this man to qualities like that of Hitler (like her father) and his love for the hug and screw (66) which are both grue some instruments used for torture. Next in line 71, If Ive killed one man, Ive killed two the speaker implies that not only has she killed her father but she has killed her husband now. The vampire who said he was you / And drank my blood for a year, / Seven years, if you want to know. (72-74).The speaker again uses the word vampire invite out now she is using it to describe her husband. Her husband is described to be sucking the life out of her just a vampire sucks the blood from a body, just like her father did for thirty years. At first the speaker makes it sound like she has been married for only a year, but then changes it to seven. This could be because their join has run together in a blur of unhappiness and upon further thought she realizes it has actually been seven years. Sylvia Plath was married to Ted Hughes for about seven years, as well. (Shmoop, 2013).The windup of the poem the speaker uses to say that her father needed to be killed just like a vampire with a stak e to the heart. Theres a stake in your fat, black heart. (76). Then the speaker tells us that nobody liked her father either and they danced on his grave because they also saw him to be like that of a vampire, sucking the life out of people and the reason for so much unhappiness. The very last line of the poem, Daddy, daddy, you bastard, Im through. (80), the speaker uses to finally be done with her father. This is the peak of the poem and I picture the speaker to spit this line right at father and finally liberal herself. Shmoop, 2013). In Sylvia Plaths poem, Daddy, she tells a chilling description of a man whom she compares to Hitler, a man who is her daddy. This poem uses many different metaphors to compare different things vampires, black hearts, a black shoe, Nazis and Jews. All of these add to the image the speaker is trying to create of her father. The cruelty of this man is completely disturbing. The word daddy is usually used as term of endearment for a father, but in th is poem the speaker uses it sarcastically to demean her father because he never truly was a father to her.The fear and horror inflicted on the speaker comes out in the poem in the angry tone she uses throughout the piece. Daddy? This man was no father at all. Sources Daddy Stanza 16 Summary. Shmoop Homework Help, Teacher Resources, Test Prep. N. p. , n. d. Web. 7 Feb. 2013. http//www. shmoop. com/daddy-sylvia-plath/stanza-16-summary. html. Plath, Sylvia. Daddy Sylvia Plath. internal. org poets. N. p. , n. d. Web. 7 Feb. 2013. http//www. internal. org/Sylvia_Plath/Daddy.