In an introduction to "Daddy" prepared for the BBC, Sylvia Plath explained that
"the poem is spoken by a girl with an Electra complex. Her father died while she thought he was God. Her case is complicated by the fact that her father was also a Nazi and her mother very possibly part Jewish. In the daughter the two strains marry and paralyze each other--she has to act out the awful little allegory once over before she is free of it."
The figure of "Electra" used by Plath is a Greek daughter whose relationship to her tyrannical father--Agamemnon, who sacrificed his other daughter, Iphigenia, to the winds--is erotically charged. After Agamemnon is killed, Electra's mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, abuse Electra because of her loyalty to the memory of her father. Out of her hatred toward her mother and her love for her father, Electra urges her exiled brother to return and to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.
The conflation of Agamemnon-father-Hitler-husband is both haunting and powerful in "Daddy," in which the pull of patriarchy is so strong that the daughter/speaker needs to kill her father/husband in order to free herself from them. However, even when she has resolved to kill her father, she is still half in love with him. Give me some lines or imageries that for you illustrate this emotional ambivalence.
28 comments:
"Daddy,i have hade to kill you.
You died before i hade time-
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco." In this stanza, i can realize how she hates her Daddy, and gives her Daddy a horrible metaphor. However, i found another stanza which acn express her missing to her Daddy.
"Bit my pretty red heart in two.
i was ten when they buired you.
At twenty i tried to die
And get back, back, back to you
i thought the bones would do."
In fact, i am touching by this stanza, even she wrote sanzas to show how she detest her Daddy. in the stanza, i can see Slyvia
Plath still wants to meet her father again. Form"get back, back, back to you" i feel that she must miss her father deeply. Compared with those two stanzas, i cam see the ambivalent emotion to her Daddy
"You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe"
I can tell from this two sentence that she is free from the control of her father. She feels relieved.
"Says ther 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."
In this stanza, the ambivalent feeling Plath holds toward her father reveals. She want to talk to him, but she always fail to do that because of her fearness.
"At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you."
This two sentences convey her desire to meet her father again, even it costs her whole life.
"Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through." In my opinion, I think she still can't forget her daddy. The reason why she called her daddy a bastard is because he didn't give her the love and concern she needs. She hates her father for she didn't get his love.
“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.” In this stanza, we can see she hate her father, because he passed away as a ghastly person to her. She felt that she was abandoned by him, and this kind of thought kept haunting her. I think she really miss her dad. ” it struck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene.” I think the first few lines are talking about that she still can’t get rid of his father’s death. She was under the shadow of that incident and struggled a lot. And, “ a model of you ,“ is an image of her father.
"I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you." "I made a model of you, a man in black with a Meinkampf look." This shows the love the author had for her father. There's a stake in your fat black heart and the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always know it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'n through." I can tell from the voice and also the words that the author loved her fahter, but she also hated him due to her love for him.
I think in Sylvia's bottom of heart, she love her father. However, his tyrannical thoughts or words or actions made her uncomfortable, irritated, scared, and out of breath. Therefore, there was a little bit hate. It was kind of contradicting; however, I think love still seizes most of the parts. The second and the last stanza were interesting for me cause I was like "Wow, you wanna kill your father?!" and I laughed while I have read the last sentence that she called her father a baster. It seems that Sylvia is a very emotional person. I think this is a good and fascinating poem.
I believe that it is an extremely complex emotion and hard to express. How does a person love and also hate one person. If we fall in love with someone, we aspire after their love. However, it can also turns to hatred if the person doesn’t love you anymore. We all have this kind of potential. This ambivalence is not easy to manage, and it may let you feel fretful. The feeling is like erosive poison, and it will get into your whole body, brain, heart and so on. It tortures you every second every day, only to kill the person or yourself then you can be released. I think I know this feeling a bit when the person who you love doesn’t love you, and you will feel the ambivalence conflicting on your mind.
“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.”
These lines show that Sylvia Plath tried hard to learn German in order to talk to her father. Though she hated him, even wanted to kill him, she wanted to communicate with him.
“At twenty I tried to die”
“And get back, back, back to you.”
“I thought even the bones would do”
These lines show that she loved her father and she wanted to commit suicide to get back to her father. She hated her father, but at the same time, she loved her father, too. Even though she hated him a lot, she still tried to get back to her father and stay with him.
I think it is really show a very strong emotion of Sylvia's love and hate toward her father. Because of the circumstances she grew up. Although her father is just like a tyranny and made her felt under big pressure, she still love her father very much. Her father's influence on her is countless. Her complicated feelings for her father could be found in this poem " Daddy". She felt very joyful to scold her father; meanwhile, she felt deeply regret and grieved for his father's death. Both hate and love are intense. But I think most part of her emotion is love.
In “Daddy” this poem, I think the most impressed lines are “ 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 not Any less the black man who 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”. From these lines, I could feel that Sylvia Plath ambivalent affection for his father. She mentions that her dad is an evil who bit her heart; nevertheless, in the following lines, she manages to die because she thinks that death can make her come nearly to her father. Although Sylvia Plath calls dad as an devil, she still loves her dad for longing for death to see her dad again.
“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.”
In this first stanza, I can feel that Sylvia extremely desires to escape from her dad, no matter the phantom or the image or reflection of her husband. She just cries out for relief, because her dad still puts his power upon her. It really makes her choke, more excruciating than death. For thirty years, Sylvia lived on recurrent miserable days when her dad’s portraits appeared in her mind or are just incorrigibly entwined all the time. That’s terrible, because I can not imagine someone’s spirit is haunted by the creep of a fiend.
“It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.”
In these sentences, I can sense the emotional ambivalence between Sylvia’s affection and hatred toward her dad. It is a painful trap which makes her grieve to the extent of wishing to die; however, she can not give vent to her distress by wailing or howling. She could hardly speak, because she also deeply loves her dad. She can’t identify the trap is the way she yearns for to get closer to her dad or to evade her dad. It’s the truth I think that when Sylvia completely loves her dad, she’s unable to express her feeling straightforwardly at all no matter she’s suffered to somehow extent. The contradictory metal states which struck her dumb are entangled.
“Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart if a brute like you.”
Sylvia is also attractive to a dominate man, like her father. Although she has been tortured by her adoration, she always longs for sojourning in reminiscence of her dad.
She wrote the word “brute” three times in one sentence in order to demonstrate her abomination. In my opinion, I think that Sylvia loves her father to the ultimate attainment, but she never gets feedbacks from him. Therefore, she’s forced to use her aversion toward her father in the cause of concealing her mighty heartbroken feelings. These are her extraordinary backgrounds, so to accomplish a marvelous life and astounding works.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---“
The two lines seem that she very hates her daddy.
“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”
However, from these lines, I think that, in fact, she very loves her daddy.
From these lines, I also can realize the reason why she wants to kill her father: he left (passed away) her when she was at the age of needing caring and dependence.
“I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look”
“And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.”
Form these lines, I also can make out another reason that why she wants to kill her father. She loves her father so much that she finds a husband, whose temperament is very like her father. However, her marriage is full of pain and misery.
"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"
"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
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I know what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do,I do.
So Daddy,I'm finally through."
After I become more and more familiated with Sylvia Plath's emotion and her poems,I am attracted by her deeply.Who would consider the relationship between a mother and her baby as a museum and statue or wind and cloud,presentiong the confusion and indifference of a new life? Who would wrote his or her own father as a Nazi who pressed his daughter as such,and who would express the emotion of Electra complex so powerful but ambiguous as Sylvia Plath did? The stanzas I type down here present her hate as well as her adoration toward her tyrannical father.Moreover,Sylvia Plath further transformed her love from her late father to her husband who had similar personality with her father.From this you can imagine how deep and crazy and complicated is her emotion to his father.She is a genius,and no one will deny it.
"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."
It seems that Sylvia was happy when her father was dead. She thought she was free from her father's control.
"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."
However, she also loved her father. She was painful because of her father's death, and she tried several times to kill herself in order to be with her father. However, doctors saved her life again and again made her suffer more and more pain. Finally, she found a model of her dad who also made her suffer such pain. The man betrayed her and she again tried to suicide, and this time she was really dead. I think Sylvia loved and hated her father so much that made her so scary and crazy.
"Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through."
"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 firmly think these sentences represent Sylvia Plath's strong emotional ambivalence. Obviously, she loves her father because I can see how she miss' her father. However, she also hates her father deeply, for her father left her when she was ten. I think this is an emotional change. If I love someone so deep but I can't touch, I may change my emotion into opposite. I think this is really a great poem, I can totally feel her emotion.
"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." These sentences show how her love to her father and how mich she missed him. "If I've killed one man, I've killed two." It showed how sad her feeling about her father's died and her husband's betrayal. I think it's a very emotional poem about her complex feeling of her dad. And finally she got through it.
“Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time－
Marble-heavy, a big full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal”
From this stanza, we can know the author really hated her father and wanted to kill him by herself. This stanza also reveals author’s hatred toward her father.
“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.”
These sentences are not from the same stanza but we can see the author was suffering about her own emotion towards her father. She wants to talk to him but she just like stuck in a barb wire snare and hardly speaks.
“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 the bones would do”
This stanza described how author love his father and wanted to accompany him even she had to suicide. The author really loved her father but he died so early and the author’s love became half love and half hate. So she wrote she wanted to kill her father in second stanza of this poem.
If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year
Seven years, if you want to know
Daddy, you can lie back now
There’s a stake in your far black heart
And the villagers never liked you
They are dancing and stamping on you
They always knew it was you
Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
I think two stanzas present the ambivalence to his father, and this is a good ending for her to describe this kind of ambivalence. The first stanza I mentioned above is a love for her daddy, and by loving his daddy she married with his husband. Because she loves her daddy, she found the person like him. So, she says if she killed one man, she killed two. Two means to be her daddy and her husband. It is her daddy who drank her blood for a year, and seven years means the period of marriage which is indirectly cause by her daddy. The final stanza I mentioned above stands for the hate to her daddy, especially the final line- Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through. It’s the sentence that I love most because it presents the most hatred to his daddy, and she wrote it like that she got rid of her daddy’s trouble. Therefore, I think this two stanzas stand for the ambivalence.
In this poem, there are many lines that the narrator blackguards her father, but there are also some lines showing that she was also in love with his father at the same time, such as the following ones:
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
From the above lines, you can see that the narrator hoped to get back to his father, and she even made a model of him. However, “the rack and the screw” indicates that this model was just like his father who always tortured her, but she desired to marry this model, which shows the ambivalence of the hatred as well as the love toward her father.
“Daddy,i have hade to kill you.
You died before I hade time.”
Sylvia showed her ambivalent feeling in this part. First, she wanted killed her father; however, she complained that her father dead when she was a young girl. His father never joined with her childhood.
“At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you.” This was her second time to try to suicide. She wanted to see and missed her dad pretty much.
"Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through." She cursed her dad and thought she could not endure her dad’s violence.
For Sylvia’s personality, we could find that nobody could present as supernatural god who could not make mistake. As a people, we should know that disadvantages and advantages personality will be combined in each of us. However, we have resposibilities to correct our bad habits forever.
“If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.”
This is one powerful stanza that portraits her emotional ambivalence, “The vampire who said he was you” shows that deep down in Plath’s heart, she don’t want her daddy to be the vampire, but also implies that her dad is doing such a thing, so that she hate him as well.
“And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.”
This can’t be more obvious on the imagery: rack and screw, what a painful love!
In this peom, Sylvia Plath showed her contradiction in the relationship with her father. "Daddy,I have hade to kill you.You died before I hade time''
In some ways, she hated her father so bad that she even wanted to kill him. ''I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.'' In these lines, we can see that she was also scared of her father's authority. However, she was actually long for a father's love.
''I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you.'' From the lines I can feel her strong emotion toward her father, and the Elctra Complx.
After reading this poem, I think Sylvia still love her father deeply. However, she expresses a lot of hatred feelings and cursing words toward her father. Such as “Ich, ich, ich, ich”, “I could hardly speak.” “I thought every German was you.” “And the language obscene” However, she also shows great feeling of love toward her father. Such as “Says there are a dozen or two.” “So I never could tell where you”. From above sentences we can know that sometimes she also feel in a maze. She hates her father because he died when Sylvia was only ten, and could not provide protection and care for her. However, in her innermost feeling also strongly desire her father’s protection and loving care. Then that tributes to her complex feelings to her father.
"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 not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red hair in two.
I was ten when buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back,back,back to you.
I thought even the bones would do
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue."
I can tell from these lines that she still loved her father deeply even though after his death.Under this influence,she tried to commit suicide so that she could return to her father.However,she failed,and she turned up to find a replacement,her husband,which turned out to be another failure.
I suppose that she uses black shoe to image both her father and her husband. Shoes are necessities for people; however, shoes with bad quality are surely killing for people. She have lived like a foot in her father's shoe for thirty years. Then she was kept in living another shoe of her husband because she could not just give away her being half in love with her father. That is, she chosed someone like her father to be her husband.
The poem "Daddy" can be interpreted along with other poems by Plath as semi-autobiographical regarding her own relationship with her father or her husband. Plath states: “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.” By this, she reveals her unhealthy relationship with the memory of her father. “A man in black with a Meinkampf look and a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do.” These lines somehow become emotional ambivalence of Silvia Plath’s "Electra Complex" toward her farther. She chooses her father as a reference to her husband, Ted Hughes. I cannot help to wonder the exact feeling of Plath towards her farther-love or hate? Even though she uses severe and mean words to describe her farther, she still hopes to marry someone like her farther (deep inside her heart).
“Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
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 not
Any less the black man who”
Sylvia Plath releases the bare emotion about her young-dead father . With no doubt , he has an important place and deep influence during her lifetime . It is not only with the admirable mood but also including the abominable resistance in the same person . From the sentence above , you can easily feel the difficult state she has . She loves her father while at the same time she hates the personality he had . The deeds he had made also make her loathing him more . How can this two different feelings exist simultaneously？It is really a magical misunderstanding for me to know that a father’s figure can have this dark kind of aspect . I must say that Sylva Plath is really creative .
“you stand at the blackboard,
daddy,
In the picture Ihave of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
Iwas ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do”
She has a picture of her father, when she saw her father had a cleft in his chin but not on his foot, she imagined her father as a devil. But it’s not enough to decribe how evil he is, so she said he is no less than Hades. It hurts a lot when she had to accept that her father was dead at 10 years old, she hated him for leaving her in her child hood. On the other side, she had committed suicide at twenty in order to approach him. She love him deeply, but she couldn’t tell him how her felt. So she talked to him in the poetry, showing her love and anger to her father.
< I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- >
She is afraid of her father in sight, even the details of his face. < And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look > However, because she is fond of her father, she gets married with a man who is similar to him.
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