Daddy - Sylvia Plath Commentary Essay Example
Daddy – Sylvia Plath
English Commentary
Daddy is a confessional poem written by the famous American poet Sylvia Plath. The poem was written on October 12, 1962 shortly before her death. It gives the readers glimpses from her life and the poem can be said to be symbolic. The tittle “Daddy” symbolizes her father and Germany, its culture, people and the events that took place when the poem was written, ethnic cleansing and the killing of Jews. The poem gives us the views of the author, Sylvia Plath on the Nazis and their acts like mass killing of Jews on the name of Purity. The relative popularity of “Daddy” can be attributed to Plath’s use of Imagery and the controversial use of Holocaust as metaphor. Many also believe “Daddy” to be a response of Sylvia Plath’s complex relationship with her father Otto Plath and her husband Ted Hughes.
The poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath deals with a girl’s deep attachment to the memory of her father and the unhappiness it caused in her life. The poem can also be said as an outlet for Plath to deal with her father’s death or her husband’s betrayal. The poem reads life a confessional story from the personal life of the author. Plath can be seen to reinvent the relationship as one between a Nazi and a Jew creating what can be said as an “oppressor-oppressed” dynamic, which was similar to what existed between her, and her father. Sylvia Plath herself called the poem to be based on a girl with Electra complex. The speaker, Plath creates a figurative image of her father using varied metaphors to describe her relationship with him. She calls him like a black shoe the she had lived in, like a statue that stretches across the United states, like God who had the ultimate power, like a Nazi who was full of hatred and was stern, like a swastika and finally like a vampire who sucked her blood. The speaker, full of fear of her father represents
English Commentary
Daddy is a confessional poem written by the famous American poet Sylvia Plath. The poem was written on October 12, 1962 shortly before her death. It gives the readers glimpses from her life and the poem can be said to be symbolic. The tittle “Daddy” symbolizes her father and Germany, its culture, people and the events that took place when the poem was written, ethnic cleansing and the killing of Jews. The poem gives us the views of the author, Sylvia Plath on the Nazis and their acts like mass killing of Jews on the name of Purity. The relative popularity of “Daddy” can be attributed to Plath’s use of Imagery and the controversial use of Holocaust as metaphor. Many also believe “Daddy” to be a response of Sylvia Plath’s complex relationship with her father Otto Plath and her husband Ted Hughes.
The poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath deals with a girl’s deep attachment to the memory of her father and the unhappiness it caused in her life. The poem can also be said as an outlet for Plath to deal with her father’s death or her husband’s betrayal. The poem reads life a confessional story from the personal life of the author. Plath can be seen to reinvent the relationship as one between a Nazi and a Jew creating what can be said as an “oppressor-oppressed” dynamic, which was similar to what existed between her, and her father. Sylvia Plath herself called the poem to be based on a girl with Electra complex. The speaker, Plath creates a figurative image of her father using varied metaphors to describe her relationship with him. She calls him like a black shoe the she had lived in, like a statue that stretches across the United states, like God who had the ultimate power, like a Nazi who was full of hatred and was stern, like a swastika and finally like a vampire who sucked her blood. The speaker, full of fear of her father represents