Daddy Issues

Caleb Carter Professor Murphy English 1102-02 22 November 2010

Daddy Issues: The Interpretation of the Father-Dominated Family in Sylvia Plath’s “The Colossus” and Sharon Olds’ “Saturn”
Throughout traditional American society, the father has almost always been seen as the head of the household. Only in more recent decades have more varied family structures become common. The lives of Sylvia Plath and Sharon Olds are both reflective of the father-dominated family, and they represent this notion in their poetry. In “The Colossus” Plath writes about her internal struggle with her father’s death. In life, Plath’s father was rarely involved in the lives of his children. This longing for the unrequited love of her father resulted in a personal quest to build the

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relationship they never had, represented in the poem by the protagonist’s efforts to rebuild the fallen Colossus of Rhodes. In “Saturn” Olds deals with her own issues with her father—mirroring his alcoholism and its effect on his family to the mythical tale of the Roman god Saturn devouring his sons. Both poems make allusions to mythical deities as a metaphor for the dominance of a father over the family. The protagonist’s obsession in “The Colossus” with restoring the great fallen statue of Helios and Olds’ comparison of alcoholism to the myth of Saturn both represent that a father’s actions—in life and in death— have a lasting psychological effect on his children. Sylvia Plath’s struggle with overcoming the loss of her father is one of the dominant themes in “The Colossus.” In the poem the protagonist attempts to restore the fallen Colossus of Rhodes. The Colossus was an over 100 ft. bronze statue depicting the Greek god Helios, which is among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It stood overlooking the harbor of the

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city of Rhodes, Greece until it fell during an earthquake in 225 BC. Plath uses this godly effigy as a metaphor for the image she has of her father. Plath’s father died when she was eight years old—a time when most children are still dominated completely by their parents, instilling in them a view of their parents as gods. When Plath lost her father during this period, his towering image froze solid and shattered simultaneously, his “fluted bones and acanthine hair” (line 20) lying in ruin in her mind. Plath uses an image of the Roman Forum to connect those of her dead father and the Colossus: “O father, all by yourself / You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum” (17-18). The Roman Forum is no longer a functional structure, but its ruins still exist, just like the ruins of the Colossus and Plath’s vague memory of her father. Plath, through the poem’s protagonist, is trying to restore the shattered Colossus of her father, “dredg[ing] the silt from [his] throat” (9) in order to understand the god she never knew. Her protagonist’s

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rebuilding of the Colossus was the closest Plath could ever come to obtaining the relationship with her father that had eluded her during his life. This interpretation of the Colossus as being not only a metaphor for Plath’s father but also a hypothetical replacement for him is understandable considering the psychological aspects of the fatherdaughter relationship. A girl’s relationship with her father is an integral part of her childhood development. According to Shari Jonas, “the desire [for girls] to be loved by [their] dads is a deep, emotional need” (“Effects”). Jonas goes on to explain that if a girl is denied a relationship with her father, she will typically try to fill the role of that father figure, usually through her romantic relationships. Plath replaces her father, not with a man, but with the Colossus. Jonas states that “never bonding with your father may [make you] feel as if there is a void in your life which you have been trying to fill ever since” (“Effects”). The Colossus is Plath’s coping mechanism,

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her way of filling the void left by her father. The Colossus is an “oracle, / Mouthpiece of the dead” (6-7) through which her father can speak to her, fulfilling the dominant role he resisted in life. Sharon Olds’ poem “Saturn” also maintains the theme of the ill effects of the father-dominated family. Unlike “The Colossus,” wherein Plath explores the negative effects of a father’s distance, Olds reveals how the bond between a parent and child can cause that child to be plagued by the demons of the father. In “Saturn” Olds uses her experience with an alcoholic father to craft a critique of the male role in society and how, through this patriarchal structure, a father’s alcoholism can have a debilitating affect on the family, specifically in regard to the son he is trying to mold. Like Plath, Olds’ poem also makes reference to GrecoRoman myth. “Saturn” begins with a literal depiction of the father passed-out drunk: “He lay on the couch night after night, / mouth open, . . . / big hand / fallen away from the glass” (lines 1-7). The poem then shifts

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to a fantasized portrayal of the father devouring his son. The poem’s title and the father’s actions allude to the Roman myth of the colossus, Saturn, devouring his sons. This act of devouring is a metaphor for the terrible effects of alcoholism, causing the lives of the family members to “slowly / [disappear] down the hole of [the father’s] life” (10-11). The fact that the sons are being devoured in the myth is also a metaphor for the damaging methods which father’s use to instill the concept of the father-dominated family in their sons. The poem depicts the father biting off his son’s arm “and suck[ing] at the wound / as one sucks at the sockets of a lobster” (13-14). The father is devouring his son’s source of life, emotionally damaging and weakening him in order to “ show [him] what a man could do—show his son / what a man’s life was” (30-31). In doing this, the father is teaching his son a man’s role in society: that a man is in control of his family. While Saturn devoured his sons physically in order to maintain his power over the

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world, the father, through his alcoholism, devoured his son emotionally in order to maintain his power over the family, and by example passed these despotic methods to his son. Fathers play a tremendous role in the lives of their sons. One of his main duties is to teach his son everything he needs to know about being a man. Attempting to learn these lessons in a household traumatized by alcoholism can have a devastating effect: “Comparisons between alcoholic and normal families have revealed that families of alcoholics are more troubled and dysfunctional. Their interactions are characterized by higher levels of negativity, conflict, and competitiveness, decreased levels of cohesion and expressiveness, and deficits in problemsolving capabilities” (Rotunda). When the teacher of these lessons is the alcoholic, it is even worse because alcoholic families have “unhealthy parent-to-child communications” (Rotunda). The father in “Saturn” attempted to impart life lessons onto his son, but the

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father’s ideas about “what a man’s life was” (31) became warped by alcohol and abuse. Unless another father figure comes into the son’s life, he will likely retain these skewed ideas of masculinity into adulthood, potentially plaguing his own fatherdominated family with alcoholism and abuse. Both poems reflect the effects of being raised within the father-dominated family structure, using mythical deities as a metaphor for the father’s overwhelming impact on his family members’ lives. In “The Colossus” Plath channels her resentment over her father’s death to show the effect of the fatherdaughter relationship on a woman’s adult life. Her emotionally neglectful father denied her a relationship, which is shown to be integral to a girl’s development. When her father dies at Plath’s young age, all hope of achieving this relationship was lost, leaving an emptiness and instilling in her a futile desire to posthumously gain her father’s unrequited love. The restoration of the Colossus by the poem’s

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protagonist represents her longing to do the same with her father—to bring him back to life. In turn, the Colossus becomes an oracle through which her father can manifest himself and fulfill his role as father figure. Through the poem’s protagonist, the Colossus bestows upon Plath a fatherly protection: “Nights, I squat in the cornucopia / of your left ear, out of the wind” (24-25). Just as the Colossus shields the poem’s protagonist from the wind, it also shields Plath from the pain of her father’s loss, allowing her to cope. “Saturn” also deals with the loss of a father: not to death, but to the ravages of alcoholism. Old calls upon her past experience to tell the story of an alcoholic father who becomes a total slave to his addiction. His alcoholism controlled him to the point that even “as he lay / on his back, snoring” (9-10), his drinking continued to tear his family apart. Olds uses the metaphor of Saturn devouring his sons to represent the particularly devastating effect of alcoholism on the father-son relationship. The alcoholism hinders the

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father’s ability to perform his duty of teaching his son how to be man. It causes the father’s teachings to become forceful and destructive. Instead of the son learning how to be a proud, nurturing husband, he learns, through example, that a man maintains control over his family by devouring their will to fight against him. Both poems come from two women whose terrible relationships with their fathers had a negative impact on their adult lives. This goes to show that no matter how absent a father may be—whether physically, mentally, or emotionally—in a father-dominated family structure, his influence cannot be escaped.

Works Cited
Jonas, Shari. “The Effects of the Father Daughter Relationship on Self Esteem – From First Love to Self Love.” EzineArticles.com. 22 Apr. 2009. Web. 13 Nov. 2010. Olds, Sharon. “Saturn.” The Gold Cell. New York: Knopf, 1987. 24.

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Plath, Sylvia. “The Colossus.” The Collected Poems: Sylvia Plath. Ed. Ted Hughes. New York: HarperPerennial, 1981. 129. Rotunda, Robert J., David G. Scherer, and Pamela S. Imm. “Family systems and alcohol misuse: Research on the effects of alcoholism on family functioning and effective family interventions.” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 26.1 (1995): 95-104. PsycARTICLES. EBSCO. Web. 13 Nov. 2010.

Cited: Jonas, Shari. “The Effects of the Father Daughter Relationship on Self Esteem – From First Love to Self Love.” EzineArticles.com. 22 Apr. 2009. Web. 13 Nov. 2010. Olds, Sharon. “Saturn.” The Gold Cell. New York: Knopf, 1987. 24. The Interpretation of the Father-Dominated Family SE-47 Plath, Sylvia. “The Colossus.” The Collected Poems: Sylvia Plath. Ed. Ted Hughes. New York: HarperPerennial, 1981. 129. Rotunda, Robert J., David G. Scherer, and Pamela S. Imm. “Family systems and alcohol misuse: Research on the effects of alcoholism on family functioning and effective family interventions.” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 26.1 (1995): 95-104. PsycARTICLES. EBSCO. Web. 13 Nov. 2010.