FREE ESSAY ON ANALYSIS OF PLATH'S DADDY

ANALYSIS OF PLATH'S DADDY

Sylvia Plath uses her poem, Daddy, to express deep emotions toward her father's life and
death. With passionate articulation, she verbally turns over her feelings of rage,
abandonment, confusion and grief. Though this work is fraught with ambiguity, a reader
can infer Plath's basic story. Her father was apparently a Nazi soldier killed in World
War II while she was young. Her statements about not knowing even remotely where he was
while he was in battle, the only photograph she has left of him and how she chose to
marry a man that reminded her of him elude to her grief in losing her father and missing
his presence. She also expresses a dark anger toward him for his political views and
actions in such passages as: "Not God but a swastika / so black no sky could squeak
through" and "...the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you." She goes on talk about how
her poor or non-existent relationship with her father caused her to enter an unhealthy
relationship. Finally, she conveys a mood of overcoming this man's dark hold on her. She
is still filled with unhealthy rage toward him but in her repeating that she is "through"
and discussing having killed someone she demonstrates her feelings of self-empowerment.
As Plath is using this poem as her personal forum to release her emotions, she also
provides her audience with a look of her artistic style. She creates a poem that will
enthrall the reader using mediums like vague material such as stanza two (2):
"Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time-
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal."
She also uses quite a bit of repetition to emphasize her points. A repeated word tends to
offer a high level of exaggeration. She does not use repeated sounds so much as words or
phrases that allow the audience to almost picture a woman screaming angrily. She also
presents a slight rhythm to the reading that allows for smooth reading. In keeping with
her open form, there is no set scheme to the rhyme pattern. However, there is a single
ending sound constantly repeated without a set pattern throughout the work. She also
connects pairs of lines at random just for the sake of making connections to make that
particular stanza flow. At the same time, she chose blatantly not to rhyme in certain
parts to catch the reader's attention. 
There are a few instances where imagery is used to carry out Plath's expression. To cite
a particular example that might lead a reader deduce their own ideas can be found in the
last stanza: "And the villagers never liked you. / They are dancing and stamping on you."
This undoubtedly expresses her father's death and burial but more importantly it states a
certain humiliation she faced from everyone knowing what her father had died for, along
with her own rage toward him. Another can be found in lines 24-25: "I never could talk to
you. / The tongue stuck in my jaw." The picture of someone being tongue-tied along with
her statement in line 41: "I have always been scared of you," demonstrate just that; she
was fearful of her father. She also gives an image that provides the reader a view of how
Plath physically viewed her father and chose a man that she states reminds her of him: "A
man in black with a Meinkampf look." As most victims or people with poor self-esteem, she
chose to place herself in the same unpleasant life as she had had with her father by
marrying a man that was just like him. She repeatedly talks of the color black expressing
her dark perspective of her father and life in general. She also uses language that
portrays darkness without using colors, for example in lines 71-73:
"If I've killed one man, I've killed two-
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year."
This passage eludes that she may or may not have actually killed her husband and in doing
so conquered her father in a sense. Nevertheless, it demonstrates her dark perspective of
her marriage in describing her husband as a vampire that continually tortured her. 
Plath's work in the poem is undoubtedly bold and expressive. She uses a passion that
makes her point clear even though her language may not necessarily be so obvious. She
allows her readers to ride the roller coaster of battling her emotions with a freedom
that suggests the piece was written for strictly personal expression; never to be read by
others. The majority of the poem may certainly even be open for a variance of
interpretations providing for a truly interesting work. 
Work Cited
Plath, Sylvia. "Daddy." Literature: The Evolving Canon. Eds. 2nd ed. 
Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 571-573
"You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot 
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. 5
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time-
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, 
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal 10
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset. 
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du. 15
In German tongue, in the Polish town 
Scraped flat by the roller 
Of wars, wars, wars. 
But the name of the town is common. 
My Polack friend 20
Says there are a dozen or two. 
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw. 25
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 30
An engine, an engine
Chuffling me off like a Jew. 
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. 
I began to talk like a Jew. 
I think I may well be a Jew. 35 
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna 
Are not very pure or true. 
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew. 40
I have always been scared of you, 
With you Luftwaffe, Your gobbledygoo. 
And your neat mustache 
And your Aryan eye, bright blue. 
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You- 45
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could sqeak through. 
Every woman adores a Fascist, 
The boot in the face, the brute 
Brute heart of a brute like you. 50
You stand at the blackboard, daddy, 
In the picture I have of you, 
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no no 
Any less the black man who 55
Bit my pretty red heart in two. 
I was ten when they buried you. 
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you. 
I thought even the bones would do. 60
But they pulled me out of the sack, 
And they stuck me together with glue. 
And then I knew what to do. 
I made a model of you, 
A man in black with a Meinkampf look 65
And a love of the rack and the screw. 
And I said I do, I do. 
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root, 
The voices just can't worm through. 70