An Explication Of Sylvia Plath's Daddy

As one of America’s most famous poets, Sylvia Plath’s works have long been discussed and analyzed amongst literary professionals and laymen alike. In Plath’s poem “Daddy”, arguably one of her most important works, she presents a piece chock full of symbols, imagery, and themes worth discussing. In the poem, the speaker is presumably a young woman speaking to her father. Today, many readers make the assumption that “Daddy” is actually more of an autobiography for Plath, and it is considered to be a part of what many call confessional poetry (Uroff 104). People believe this poem is a reflection of Plath’s life because of the glaringly similar detail between the speaker and Plath. Two of the biggest similarities are an oppressive German father
that dies when the speaker and Plath are young girls and a marriage that was also oppressive in nature. Despite the likelihood that Plath wrote this poem from a personal view, one cannot know for sure. In “Daddy”, Plath uses of imagery and symbolism to convey the speaker’s onerous relationship with her father and eventual husband. The first stanzas of “Daddy” set a particularly dark tone for the rest of the poem, as the speaker compares herself to a foot stuck in a shoe (Plath 2-3) and makes it known that she has “killed” her father (Plath 6) in a metaphorical sense, and despite having a clear defiance to her father, the speaker complicates the situations when she says that he died too soon (Plath 7) because it becomes unclear if the reader has only distaste for her father, or possibly something else.
The speaker also beings to create an image of her dead father by comparing him to physical things, as well as actions. When the speaker compares him to a statue (Plath 9), she creates a sense of largeness in relation to her father, not just in the physical sense, but also in a way that makes it clear that he is an all-consuming aspect in her life, dead or alive. This comparison also hones in on the idea that sometimes even in death, a person can have just as much, if not more, impact on one’s life. The speaker, aware of this existing issue, expresses her need to have closure when she says, “I used to pray to recover you” (Plath
14). At this point in the poem, the speaker has made clear that her father was German, and she has decided to find out where he came from.
She is not able to find this town because it has a common name in the German language, however (Plath 19-23). The speaker also begins to have a very obvious aversion to Germans while on her search of her father’s origins, and she even finds the language to be “obscene” (Plath 30). The obscenity the speaker feels for the German language goes so far as to make her feel like a Jew amidst Germans in the time of Nazi reign, an expression of the discomfort and horror the speaker feels. The speaker begins to more clearly illustrate the level of oppression she feels from her father when she states, “I think I may well be a Jew” (Plath 35) because she has placed herself, theoretically, in the place of a group of people who were oppressed, mistreated, injured, tortured, and killed by German Nazis, and she has placed her father in the group of Nazis. In relation to her father, she later goes on to blatantly say, “I have always been scared of you” (Plath 41), and she finally gives a more clear physical description of him when she states, “And your neat mustache / And your Aryan eye, bright blue” (Plath 43-44). These lines reaffirm the speaker’s idea of her father as a Nazi, and by mentioning his mustache, she goes one step further by paralleling him with an idea of Hitler, who is famously known by his distinctive mustache and evil
nature. The speaker continues to compare her father to terrible things, even going so far as to compare him to the devil (Plath 53-54). The poem comes to somewhat of a climax when the speaker reveals that ten years after his death, when she was twenty years old, she tried to commit suicide (Plath 57-58) in an attempt to reach him once more (Plath 59-60). Because her attempt to join her father in death as has been foiled, the speaker says that she would instead find a substitute for her father’s place in her life, telling her father, “I made a model of you” (Plath 64). The speaker is basically saying that she has found a husband who is just like her father was when he was alive, similar in both behavior and appearance (Plath 65). By marrying a man just like her father, the speaker in the poem has an Electra complex, which is basically a term used to describe girls who pursue men like their fathers. Upon marrying this man just like him, the speaker tells her father, “So daddy, I’m finally through” (Plath 68), which would suggest she has finally found relief. However, the speaker continues, saying she has now killed not one man, but two (Plath 71), reverting back to an earlier line where she mentions killing her father. The second man can be assumed to be her husband, and the use of the word ‘kill’ is just the speaker’s way of saying they are no longer in her life. The speaker once again proclaims, “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through” (Plath 80) to end the poem. The speaker’s affectionate name for her father, “Daddy”, used throughout the poem, is especially ironic in this line of the poem as it is place alongside the word “bastard” (Plath 80). The use of these words symbolize the agonizing longing the speaker has to know and have a good relationship with her father, but the ultimate pain is subjected to just by thinking of him. The speaker in the poem makes obvious the amount of oppression she feels toward her father and his death, and eventually her husband through the use of certain words and symbols. “Daddy” includes references and metaphors to very well known people and things, such as Hitler (Plath 43-44) and vampires (Plath 72), making it easy to envision the despair and oppression the speaker feels throughout the poem. Whether or not “Daddy” is a direct reflection of Sylvia Plath’s life or not, the similarities between Plath and the speaker are obvious, and it creates a sense of authenticity for the speaker. By examining Plath’s use of imagery, symbolism, and use of certain words throughout the poem, one can clearly see the unique struggles the speaker faced in her relationships with her father and husband.