How Did Sylvia Plath Affect Her Poetry

Sylvia Plath is known for her remarkably personal poetry that explores heavy topics. The American poet was intelligent and was compelled to write poetry. She wrote her first poem when she was only eight years old, and published hundreds more before her suicide on February 11, 1963. Despite her success, Plath went through many struggles that ultimately affected her poetry. Her German father, Otto Plath, died a long and painful death in 1940. She told her mother that she would never speak to God again and felt the immense absence of her father (Hobby 1). One of her most famous works titled “Daddy” is assumed to be influenced by the death of her father, which made a large emotional impact on her due to his horrific death when she was only 8
For instance, Plath stated “I never could talk to you / The tongue stuck in my jaw / It stuck in a barb wire snare / Ich, ich, ich, ich / I could hardly speak / I thought every German was you / And the language obscene” (lines 24-30). The speaker is saying that it was difficult for her to talk to her father, perhaps because he made her nervous, and then demonstrates her tongue getting stuck to the audience using “ich”, the German word for “I”. She then admits she saw her father in every German she saw and found the language offensive. She could barely speak the language or look at Germans because they bring back painful memories of her father. Another example of the importance of German imagery in “Daddy” is shown in the following lines: “And your neat mustache / And your Aryan eye, bright blue / Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- / Not God but a Swastika / So black no sky could squeak through” (lines 43-47). The speaker describes her father as German perfection and even includes the fact that he has a neat mustache, which is obviously associated with Hitler. She then goes back to the concept of her father being God, but also says he is a swastika. Swastikas are now affiliated with evil after World War II, and she goes on to explain his extremity. Also, the speaker referred to herself as a Jew in this poem. By calling her father a Nazi and calling herself a Jew, she is explaining how she felt like a victim of her father. The use of German references in this poem is important not only because Plath’s father was German, but also because the speaker uses it to explain how evil she thought her father was after betraying her with his death using an extreme