Daddy

“Daddy” A Love Lost “Daddy” was written by poet Sylvia Plath who graduated summa cum laude Plath began her writing at the early age of 11 when she began to keep diaries after the passing of her father Otto Plath, who died from complications from surgery stemming from diabetes in 1940. “Daddy” is one of Plath’s poems written in 1962 about her father. In “Daddy” it is clear that the feelings and emotions Plath expresses for her father are unhealthy and possibly the relationship she had with him before his passing as well. While analyzing “Daddy” through the lens of love I will attempt to describe Plath’s complex love she had for her father and the detrimental affect his passing had on the internal balance of her mental stability. In “Daddy” Plath describes both a soft and warming love for her father as well as a dark and frightening side. Plath suggests she both respected and feared her father, and both loved and hated him in more than one area in this writing. One example can be seen here, “Daddy, I have had to kill you. / You died before I had time-" (Lines 6-7). She implies that she would’ve killed her father if he hadn’t died of other circumstances already, which suggests that she hated him or had some sort of malice toward him. Later she says “I used to pray to recover you.” (14). To pray to recover someone after death suggest that you miss that person and want them back for whatever reason, whether it be for unfinished business, to speak words you didn’t have the chance to say or to even take back some things you might have said that may have been hurtful. In Plath’s case it could be many things. I have even come to the idea that she may have wanted to recover her father so she could fulfill her earlier statement and kill him herself. An example of her fear can be seen best here, “I have always been scared of you, /With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.” (Lines 41-42). The word Luftwaffe is a German word for air force which suggests that Otto was possible