Preview

Daddy By Sylvia Plath Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
462 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Daddy By Sylvia Plath Essay
Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy" portrays her love and hate relationship with her own father. At first glance, the poem almost spits vivid words of rage and hate toward her father; but even on the second reading the very structure of the poem, as well as a few word choices betray the love she feels for him. This creates a warring duality and she herself the views this unresolved relationship as the root of her misery. The very title of the poem Daddy contradicts the face value of the poem as a whole. Calling someone Daddy is an intimate and childlike way to address someone. If she truly hated him, she would have never addressed him in this way. The poem continues to contradict itself with constant repetitions emphasizing drama and creating high tension strengthening class hate feeling for her father but being told with a nursery rhyme swing. The style contradicts the content of the poem, it seems more playful than serious. The fact that the poem has the same rhyme from beginning to end and short and simple structured lines gives the feeling that a little girl with an Electra complex has written this piece. …show more content…
That she, the little white foot has been framed in a black shoe for 30 years barely "daring to breath or achoo". However, "thirty" (years), has reveled her unwillingness to leave her father. Most children who have a bad relations with their parents can terminate the bond and move on with their lives as they grow up. Plath's father "died before I (she) got the chance" and the unresolved relationship followed her and she let it grow until it consumed
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Summary Of Sylvia Plath's Poem Daddy
    • 1791 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Summary Of Sylvia Plath's Poem Daddy

    The poem “Daddy” was written in 1962. Sylvia Plath discusses her love/hate for father and others using imagery from the Holocaust, Nazis, and vampires. The title of the poem suggests that it is loving and intimate, more so than if it were titled “Father”. That is where love is present. Hate and anger are present everywhere else in the poem.…

    • 1791 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Summary Of By The River By Steven Herrick
    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Summary Of By The River By Steven Herrick

    The role of family in Steven Herrick’s narrative verse poem ‘By the River’ incontestably shows its impact and importance towards a child's upbringing. The book talks about themes that develop through each poem showing the influence of a maternal figure's death, the family dynamic under the care of a father who has to play both the maternal and paternal role and how parents form the platform on which their child acts and behaves. In Steven Herrick's verse narrative, the impact of a parental figure's death, particularly the mother, is vividly portrayed against the backdrop of the 1960s where the ideal family dynamic often revolved around the presence of a mother figure, and families without such a figure were not merely pitied but often ostracised…

    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Daddy By Sylvia Plath Analysis
    • 397 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Daddy By Sylvia Plath Analysis

    Problems with men start at a young age for most women. Daddy issues is a perfect explanation for the piece “Daddy” written by Sylvia Plath. The complications that occurred early in Plath’s life then occurred in Plath's love life. After doing some research on Plath, it was apparent that a continuing theme in her life was issues with men. To fully understand this piece I had to do some research on Plath.…

    • 397 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    "Fiesta 1980” and “Daddy”
    • 806 Words
    • 4 Pages

    "Fiesta 1980” and “Daddy”

    The poem “Daddy” can be considered to be confessional. Plath attacks both her husband and her father symbolically. She relates herself to a Jew and relates her father to Hitler. This image shows that their relationship is distant and she is afraid of him, she is confined and helpless to his domination. Later on, Plath introduces her husband;" A man in black who is a "model" of her dad and will torture her free will as well and so he did for seven years, as stated in the poem which is relevant to how long their marriage lasted. Plath also searches for the father she never grew up with; he had died when she was eight. It almost seems as she wants to hate him, more than she did so it is easier for her to say goodbye to his memory.…

    • 806 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Module C Response
    • 901 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Module C Response

    To begin, in Ted Hughes’s 1999 poem collection Birthday Letters focuses on the pitfalls of the relationship while offering insight into the conflict’s origin. In Hughes’s poem “The Shot”, he identifies Plath’s obsession with her father’s death as the source of her distress through the use of an extended metaphor, use of imagery and visual structure. He begins by comparing Sylvia’s father to a “God” and her obsession as her “worship” to him as he describes, “Your worship needed a god. Where it lacked one, it found one here”. The religious reference communicates to us the audience the severity of her devotion and also her need to fulfil it with other male figures. Hughes continues to compare Plath’s consequent actions through an extended metaphor of a “bullet”. He describes her “You were gold-jacketed, solid silver, nickel-tipped. Trajectory perfect. ” The detail within the imagery such as “gold”, ”silver” and “nickel” establishes Plath’s high maintenance and her determination through the short syntax of “trajectory perfect”. Therefore, we , the audience is presented with one of the perspectives which establishes the sources of conflict in the relationship.…

    • 901 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Sylvia Plath's Depression Reflected In Her Work
    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Sylvia Plath's Depression Reflected In Her Work

    “Elm”, written about her toxic marriage to poet Ted Hughes, mainly focuses on her struggle to recover from her husband’s infidelity. However, much like many of Plath’s other pieces, elements of the poem can be interpreted as referring to her ongoing battle with depression. A prime example of Plath’s writing that can be interpreted in different ways is the line “I am terrified by this dark thing/ That sleeps in me” (“Elm” 31-32). Many choose to interpret this dark thing as her remaining love for her husband. Since the idea of love directly correlates to the overall theme of the poem, this is a popular interpretation of what the “dark thing” is referring to. However, considering Plath’s mental state at the time of writing, it can also be argued that the dark thing “sleeping” inside her is more likely the personification of her depression. Other lines in Sylvia Plath’s “Elm” reference both her heartbreak and her depression at the same time. Plath writes, “I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets”(16). By this, she means that she has had to suffer through the horrific ends of beautiful experiences. The most obvious of these beautiful sunsets that ended tragically is Plath’s marriage to Hughes. This metaphor can apply to more than just her relationship, however. It can also be applied to her life. Plath’s early life was, for…

    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Conflicting Perspectives Ted Hughes
    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Conflicting Perspectives Ted Hughes

    Plath’s anger and despair is cumulatively articulated in her poem Daddy. Her use of language techniques powerfully instructs and elicits sympathy in her readers when revealing her suffering and perspectives of her father. Daddy is a ‘confessional’ and a judgmental poem, addressed directly to her father with bitterness and sadness about her personal sufferings. This negativity with the apparent warmth of the title makes the title ironic; the title carries connotation of hatred rather than usual connotation of affection. Grotesque imagery of the creature’s ghastliness and size, a symbolic metaphor for her father, is shown in ‘Ghastly statue…Big as Frisco seal’ heading to ‘the freakish Atlantic’. The cumulative tricolon of ‘Ich, ich, ich’ symbolise her stuttering and insecure feelings as a result of not being able to talk to her father. The rhythmic…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Sylvia Plath Poem And Poetry
    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Sylvia Plath Poem And Poetry

    One can see that they had a huge impact on who Sylvia Plath was as a writer. “Sylvia Plath’s most famous poem, adored by many sons and daughters, is “Daddy”. It is a poem with an affecting theme, the feelings of the speaker as she regathers pain of her father’s premature death and her persuasion that has betrayed her by dying.” (Howe 1055). Sylvia Plath’s father died at a very young age, she was only eight years old. She always viewed her father as a strict man. Plath even compared her father to a Nazi. (“Panzer-man, panzer-man, O’ You”). This poem is a reflection of how Sylvia feels towards her father and the anger she has for him dying so young. “Sylvia Plath tries to enlarge upon the personal plight, give meaning to the personal outcry, by fancying the girl as victim of a Nazi father: “An engine, an engine / Chuffing me off like a Jew. . . .” ( Howe…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Tone And Mood Of The Poem My Father Son Roethke
    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Tone And Mood Of The Poem My Father Son Roethke

    The first order of business in a poem is to establish situation and mood, and Roethke selects the father’s drinking as the foremost fact to be conveyed. The tone is slightly comic, as the speaker suggests that there was enough alcohol on the father’s breath to inebriate a child. This observation implies that the father had consumed a substantial amount of whiskey, since the smell of it was very potent. These lines also establish a closeness between the two figures. The poem is a direct address from the son to the father, evoking a feeling of intimacy between them.…

    • 1273 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    My Papa's Waltz Poem Analysis
    • 463 Words
    • 2 Pages

    My Papa's Waltz Poem Analysis

    Overall I feel that this poem is strong and is meant to make readers feel bad and sympathy for the speaker and hate towards the father. Structure: The poem has a rhyme of ABAB CDCD etc, however most of them are slant rhymes so they don't necessarily have the same ending (ex; dizzy and easy). In addition the poem is also in iambic trimeter, meaning that there are 3 stressed syllables in each line which is in front of an unstressed syllable, but this is ironic because a waltz has three beats and the poem’s name is My Papa’s Waltz.…

    • 463 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Response To Motherhood
    • 1018 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Response To Motherhood

    Motherhood: a phenomenon as old as time, each experience as unique and different from the others. Many female poets, such as Sylvia Plath, Gwen Harwood, and Judith Wright, have used poetry to reflect on their own reality and their many complex emotions towards motherhood. Although the poets express their relationship with the concept differently, using a variety of techniques, such as imagery, metaphors, expressive language and symbolism, similar joys and struggles of motherhood are revealed.…

    • 1018 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Daddy By Sylvia Plath Essay
    • 1654 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Daddy By Sylvia Plath Essay

    She “thought every German was [her father]” (29) and this points to his presence as an overarching idea in Plath’s life, rather than an actual person. She evokes inherently terrifying imagery by comparing her father to Nazi Germany, devil’s hooves, and vampires, and these fear-saturated ideas flourish within “Daddy.” She calls him “marble heavy” and a “bag full of God” (8), portraying his influence as its entity, a omniscient presence that weighs upon Plath at every moment and defines her every movement. “Daddy” is ultimately a sentiment directed towards female individuality, or more specifically, the lack of individuality that accompanies a lifelong subordination. Plath attempts to separate herself from the desire to know her father’s “German tongue, Polish town” (16); she has some of the facts, but in the end realizes that it is a vain effort to uncover “where [he] put [his] root, [his] foot” (23) as attempt to relate to him.…

    • 1654 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Sylvia Plath Poetry Analysis
    • 868 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Sylvia Plath Poetry Analysis

    Sylvia Plath’s poetry speaks to readers of today because of its clear attack on the betrayed and powerless, emotions that many people understand.…

    • 868 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Sylvia Plath
    • 503 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Sylvia Plath

    In the poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath Sylvia began to explain her father’s physical features and occupational stance.…

    • 503 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    English Literature[EXAM]
    • 2262 Words
    • 10 Pages

    English Literature[EXAM]

    The Poem Daddy, by Sylvia Plath describes the author’s relationship and feelings towards her father that have also carried over into all of her relationships with men. In the poem her father is shown to be all powerful, Godlike and a “ghastly statue”. She describes her feelings that she must kill her father “Daddy I have to kill you”, but at age ten her father dies before she has the chance to do him in herself. Because of this her feelings towards him are left unresolved. These unresolved feelings lead to problems in all of her relationships with men, lead to feelings of oppression and control by men._In the first stanza Plath describes the influence of the speakers father has over her. She describes the speaker as a foot living inside a shoe and this foreshadows that the poem may be about a relationship, a smothering uncomfortable relationship. The shoe is portrayed as in being her father. Plath describes the speaker as “poor and white” inside the shoe. White because she is always inside the shoe, it consumes her, keeping out the air and sunlight that see needs. This is interesting because the purpose of ahoe is to protect the feet, but in her case the shoe is trapping her keeping her in a state of fear towards her father. This fear of her father is so great that she becomes barley daring to breath or “Achoo”. Of course it must be hard to breathe while being completely covered by the shoe of her father. There is also foreshadowing in Act 1 scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet where Sampson and Gregory foreshadow the possible shame and trickery of Romeo and Juliet’s relationship. Samson’s opening line, "Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals", this implies humiliation or shame. This foreshadows the shame seen in the love between Romeo and Juliet which causes them to resort to deceit and trickery impacting greatly the relationship of Juliet and her father Capulet. _…

    • 2262 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More

Related Topics