3/28/2011
【文讀assignment #3】"Daddy" by Sylvia Plath (deadline: 4/8, 12 p.m.)
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.
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Plath missed his Dad very much and regarded him as status, which could be showed in second stanza and third stanza. The image of her dad covered the whole area of the North America where Plath lived, so it became a daily routine like eating or drinking to do day by day.
Next stanza showed that Plath started to look for the original blood of her daddy which was his hometown, German. In order to get close relationship with her Daddy, she began to speak with Germany tongue. Because of the similar pronouncement of the name of towns, it was quite difficult for her figure out. Disappointed emotion gradually turned the positive sides into the dark side. Therefore, she decided to turn herself as her daddy’s rival, a Jaw, to attract his attention. And the turning is “the language obscene.”
From the picture of Hitler, Plath found the similarity as her dad, which was the neat moustache. Since she found object having the shade to her Dad, she attempted to change all of love into hate in order to get the memory of Hitler, who looked like him whole-heartily.
Besides, Plath still married a man who had had the shadow of her father. However, her husband betrayed her and had affair with other lady. It made Plath wrote the lines” a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. ” the two man Plath put her all love made her sad to death.
Therefore, she had nothing to do but kill his bastard’s father in her mind.
I think the title she used can quiet reveal some love feelings to her father. It is because daddy is the word used in an intimate way to call your father. Then, I think in the line 2 the black shoe was a symbol of her father. As soon as we think about shoe, we have two kinds of images. The first one is protection. Shoe can protect our foot from being hurt. Therefore, she used shoe to symbolize the protection of her father. Another one is oppression. It is because shoe can decide your future ways. Without shoe, you can’t go to any places and that is the same image in her mind to her father. Then, in the next stanzas, she used the opposing position between herself and her father. She thought she was the Jew who was the victim of holocaust, and her father was the German, who persecuted the Jew. I think this opposing position which she used is quiet interesting. It is because it is the same feeling she wanted to present in her mind. I think she tried to emphasize the inferior status to her father and to show her passive attitude to accept her fate of being a Jew. However, in the line 48 and 49, we see the word adore and brute. By the contradiction of these two words, I think Plath was annoyed with her fate which was stuck in her father’s “Fascist” snare; however, on the other hand she quiet enjoyed it. Then in the line 57 to 62, we discover that she committed suicide. If she really hated her father why she committed suicide after her father died? Therefore, we can get the proof that she really loved her father very much or she would not committed suicide in order to come back to her father’s side. Then, in the line 66 to 70, she discovered that her husband betrayed her because he had an affair with another woman. Therefore, she thought her husband and her father were alike. In the end, she imagined to take revenge on them.
I think why she had the emotional ambivalence is because maybe she had an Electra addiction. She really loved her father, and in her mind her father was just like a god. However, her father betrayed her because he dies. Then, she married with her husband in her adulthood. However, her husband also betrayed her because he had an affair with another girl. Therefore, she became a crazy girl because she was deeply injured by her father and her husband. These two guys were not only her most loving people, but also the most hated people.
The imageries which can fortify the influence of father in the poem are the conjunction between historical tragedy, the gloomy atmosphere and the scheme of nursery rhyme. First, nursery rhyme shows her hope on filling an absent position in her early life. It is possible that because she had always seeking for the character in her life, in the poem, she tries to transfer herself to parenthood, and make the poem like a story to children. Then the identification of victimhood, in which Plath thinks she had as much severe condition as the Jewish, constructs the entire poem. Initially, the control and occupation her Hitler-like father affect can be first noticed in the line 8 “Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, / Ghastly statue with one gray toe / Big as a Frisco seal.” The texture of marble gives readers a sense of cold and insensible. Indirectly implying what is shadowing her life includes the patriarchy from her father and her husband. Ted Hugh was more famous then Plath when they moved to America. So the pressure in Plath’s mind will be like Hugh is much powerful than her, giving her a depression of imbalance. The image of statue had related to the line16 “In the German tongue, in the Polish town” and “I thought every German was you.” The “foot” also symbolize the unapproachable image, which can be also related to the Hitler-like father and Fascists. Plath tries to identify herself with the tragedy of victim in Holocaust, “I began to talk like Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.” Utilized the event in the history, Plath tries to make her pain and struggle more concrete. Contradictionally, she write “Every woman adores a Fascist” to show her another side of emotion toward her father, a hatred side deep in her mind. All her hopes were to find a man to fill the emptiness that her father made. “I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look” means she try to fill the blank with her image of Ted Hugh, her husband.
In the end, all the value of Plath’s life is devoted to the character she is always looking for. Yet, the disappointment of death and cheat break her confidence and make her struggle for freedom.
Her father left her in very early age, she actually quite eager the love from her father. But when we read through the poem, we can find some extreme words to describe her father. In the line 2, black shoe means her father can’t control her any more. Line 6, she has to kill her father in order to free herself. Line 10, her father is a status which covers the whole America; she can’t escape, because her father is everywhere.
She thinks herself as a victim of her father’s controlling. She hates her father like the Jew hates Nazi. But in the line 46, she says that women adore a Fascist, means that her feeling to her father is pretty complicated.
Later she marries someone who has the same shape like her father. Again, this man betrays her like his father left her alone. Wedding is not just about happiness but prison. Line 66, rack and screw these two words are strong word. Because it totally show the pain she had been suffer. I think she loves her father very much, otherwise why she marries someone has the shape like her father, why she call her father daddy in this poem, why she writes poem contains her father’s shadow.
I think the reason why Sylvia Plath has such ambivalent emotion toward her father is mainly because she loved him very much. However, he left her when she was very young. As a result, this kind of love from daughter to father had changed into hatred. Plath hated that her father couldn’t stay with her, and love her as much as she does. But, sometimes she missed her father, and could hardly stop loving him. In the poem, she was kind of controlled by such emotional ambivalence.
“Daddy, I have to kill you. You died before I had time…” We can see the speaker’s anger toward her dad that the father left the daughter when the speaker was still a kid. “In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you.” These two lines shows that the speaker somehow still deeply missed and loved her father anyway, so she wished her father can revive and return to her. This kind of complex emotion is filled with the poem, and continually shows up line by line.
Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” as well as her life, indistinctly, present a kind of feeling of Electra complex. Sylvia Plath was a talented and intelligent poet, whose emotion was very painful and grievous, and also her husband’s affair made her nerves breakdown. Every time she wanted to commit suicide because she suffered from melancholia. Among “Daddy,” from the second stanza, “Daddy, I have had to kill you” and the final sentence “Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through,” we know that her emotion was very contradictory. She kept her feelings hidden fathoms deep. She loved her dad, but also hated him, or hated her husband. I think pain, struggle and torture are uncheerful things, and we must make them through and recover from them. There was once a student in our class, who also suffered from the depression. We gave her encouragement and confidence, and really she got the courage. Nowadays, she gets a job, and has a nice income! Let bygones be bygones. Don’t be like Sylvia Plath, whose whole emotion had fallen apart at the seams. But with her crazy and unique temperament, she wrote plentiful and dramatic poems! Her imagination was really touching and a genius!
In the first and second stanza, Sylvia Plath imagines that her father is just like a black shoe, which has confined her life for thirty years. However, in the third stanza, “I used to pray to recover you” means that Sylvia desires the love from her father, but her father died when she was eight. She misses her father a lot, but also hates him for leaving her so early and this causes a great impact on rest of her life. In next few stanzas, she portrays herself as a humble Jewish and her dead father as noble German (even as Hitler). In the tenth stanza, “Every woman adores a Fascist” has many dimensions, Sylvia not only describes it literally but also intimates her husband’s affair. From this, we can see that Sylvia has mixed her father with her husband together. The eleventh and twelfth stanza have a clear contrast, she says her father like a devil, but she still tries to get back to her father through suicide. Later she says that she made a model of him, her husband. She wants to get rid of shadow of her father, but she also loves her father so much. Therefore, she portrays their relationship as a manifestation of her Electra complex, that she was attracted to Hughes because he reminded her of her father. However, her husband’s betrayal let her down, so she has to kill her father/husband, which means that she has to get through of the painful memories of them and move on her life.
In this poem, Sylvia Plath expresses her ambivalent conflict to her dad. In the first stanza, Plath says that she has lived like a foot, and her father is a black shoe. It can be interpreted that she is controlled by her father even though thirty years after her father dead. In the second stanza, Plath regards her dad as God and a ghastly statue. She elevates her father to a sublime status. It expresses that she loves her father, but he is too sublime to approach. I think it is because her father died when she was eight. It is too oppressive to an eight-year-old girl. It makes her father a exalted person, simultaneously, makes him a pitiless father. And in the following stanzas, Plath begins portraying herself as Jewish and her father as her oppressor, German. She thinks herself talk as a Jew, be sent to Nazi death camps as a Jew. And she also compares her father to Hitler, thinks they have the same neat moustache and bright blue eyes. Because of the ambivalence, Plath attempts suicide by overdose of sleeping pills, and wants to get back to her father. But she is rescued finally. And then she finds a husband like her father. She wants to find back her lose childhood by the man similar to her father, but it only brings her circular torture. In the finale of this poem, Plath portrays her father as a vampire with a black heart, and keeps afflicting her. But she commits suicide a mere five months after writing this poem, it can mean that she can’t escape from these painful memories and still wants to get back to her father.
In the poem speaker calls daddy again and again, but what she do just recall everything belongs to daddy. Generally speaking, she should forget rather than remember. However, while speaker regrets she wouldn’t kill daddy, she still go back to past and deepen the image of daddy in her mind. In stanza two, speaker has declared that she has had to kill her daddy till the last stanza. Memory intertwines animosity. Memory in the poem is a kind of love for daddy. The love is bitter and speaker can’t refuse this kind of bitter love. We can see what speaker remember is the black shoe, German tongue, the picture, funeral of daddy, these imageries bit speaker’s pretty red heart. It is contradictory if she loves her daddy or not. In the last line of stanza three has a word “du”. In stanza five, speaker says “the tongue stuck in my jaw” these words express speaker wants to talk to daddy, in stanza seven, however, speaker see herself as a Jew and all German is daddy, what language he uses is obscene. Speaker wants to have communication with daddy but in the end speaker identifies herself as a victim. I think in the bottom of heart speaker still love her daddy so that she marries her husband who has daddy’s image. Speaker goes to a duplicate way. Her life filled with these two men who like vampires drink her blood, she hate them but love them at the same time, shows emotional ambivalence successfully.
In the first line, Sylvia Plath said she is the shoe and her father was the black shoe. And I think that the shoe is referring a kind of protection from his father. In the two paragraphs the girl’s father died for a long time. The girl hates his father and wants to kill him. But in the other hand we can see that she miss her father very much. In line 24, she said that she never could talk to her father and we can know that she is miss her father and want to talk to his father.
The narrator said his father is the god-like figure. So I think although his father is dead but it is the memory that the narrator cannot escape.
In the other way she thinks his father as a devil. In line53, a cleft is often mentioned with the devil’s hoof. She suicide when she was twenty because his father. So she thinks his father is a devil. She loves his father but she is also angry that her father died when she was small.
After reading this poem, we can find out that Sylvia Plath’s love towards her father was very deep-seated. We can easily finds out these evidences from the poem.
First, in line 2 and line three, black shoe and lived like a foot these two sentences might be some symbols of their intimate love and relationship. Black shoe represents Sylvia’s father, foot represents Sylvia. Which might means that father protects daughter lust like shoes protect feet. Second, for the second stanza, Sylvia said that she wanted to kill her father, this is from her enormous love towards her father transform into hate. Third, in the following stanzas, Sylvia mentioned her father’s mother land, German. She wanted to talk to her father, while she could not understand German. And for the following stanzas, Sylvia mentioned that when she was ten, her father left her, she wanted to leave this world either in the age of twenty, but came back because her father. She knew her father might be sad when he heard this. Finally, he found her lovely guy, which was perfect in her judgment. She often connected this two man into one, because she thought her father was a perfect man , too They have lots in common, the boot in the face.
However, her man hurt her heart just like her father. Her husband left her to another woman. His left was just like her father. Leave without saying goodbye.
In the first stanza, the speaker lives in the shadow of patriarchy, her father (and her husband), she is haunting about that. In the second and third stanza, the speaker thinks her father (and her husband) is huge enough to across the United State, it means her father (and her husband) has tremendous influences for her. So she wishes that she could kill her father, but in another way she pray to recover her father. So we can know about the conflict in the speaker’s mind here. In the fourth stanza to the thirteenth stanza, the speaker recognizes her father as Nazi, the German, and recognizes herself as Jew and Gypsy. Because the Nazi, her father, persecute the Jewish people and Gypsy, the speaker considers that she is one of victims of holocaust. She feels fearful and hateful but venerate to her father. In the fourteenth stanza to the end, the speaker makes up her mind to kill her father and she also say “If I’ve killed one man, I‘ve killed two” means she will kill both her father and her husband. The speaker wants to be free and she wants to be released from her father and her husband. Finally, she divorces and she takes revenge successfully, killed her father and her husband.
In the second stanza, Plath said that she should have killed her daddy, however, she did not actually do it because of the love and the hatred to her father made her confused.
In line thirty-five and forty-six to fifty, Plath told that her father was a Nazi while her mother was a Jewish woman, and it made her unable to love her father completely because of the conflict between Nazi and Jew. Ironically, she was the combination of the two opposite religion and the opposite feeling, love and hatred.
From line fifty-seven to sixty, she had the thought of killed herself to chase her father at the age of twenty. In line sixty-seven, “I do” is what a bride would say in a wedding. It tells that though Plath hated her daddy, there’s still love in some degree, and that’s the reason why she married a guy who was similar to her father.
From the sentence “If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two”, I guess one is Plath’s father, and another is her husband. It’s a symbol that she was able to get rid of the imagery.
Sylvia Plath lived a melancholy and short life because Electra complex, and the poem is written after she ended up the marriage with her husband who was a reflection of her dad.
After read this poem, I think Sylvia Plath put too much love on her father and husband but finally she didn’t get any repay from them. Instead, she was deeply hurt by these two men.
In first stanza, Plath imaged herself was controlled by her father and wanted to flee away. However, the truth is her father already died, and these were all her imagination. In third stanza, she said her father is so huge that can across the state of America. Plath wanted her father back, and she tried hard to learn German, however, she couldn’t speak German therefore she changed her attitude toward her father from love to hate. In line 31, she saw herself as a Jewish people and her father as Hitler. I think she was angry about that she loved her father very much but couldn’t get her father’s love. I think she pretend that she didn’t need a father and even wanted to kill him however, in her heart she wanted her father desperately. Why Plath acted like that? I think maybe her husband bears many similarities with her father but her husband betrays her. And Plath wants her father to accompany her and listen to her miserable marriage. But she found that her father died and she thought her father just like her husband because they all betrayed Plath. Plath was suffering from love and hate that’s why she had many ambivalent emotions.
Plath’s father passed away when she was just a child, therefore he couldn’t have the love from father as normal people have, but she lived in the shadow of her father whose was like marble, a heavy statue stood in front of her until she died, we can obviously see that in first and second stanza, on the other hand, In comparing herself to a Jew, she is saying she is victim of her father’s way, death and unpeaceful.
Her father haunted her life including in her marring, since she feels she married a man much like her father in an attempt to replace her father, also , Plath show deep anger and disgust toward her father, by comparing him to Hitler and her husband, However, Plath refers to an attempted suicide by overdose of sleeping pills, stating that it was an attempt to get back to her father, to be with him in death, She exclaims her father as god-like but make him “no less a devil” that lead her to marry a man much like him ”I made a model of you” “the vampire who said he was you”, that’s the strong complex emotion between she Plath her father.
“Daddy, I have had to kill you.”
In her heart, she wants to kill his father, though she still calls him” daddy”. If her daddy was still alive, maybe she would just her father. Her father means heavy to her. I think that also means that her father was also important to her.
“I used to pray to recover you.”
She loves her father, and she wants him back. She also tried to kill herself to go with her father.
“I have always been scared of you.”
How come she loves him but has always been scared of him? She feels her daddy is like a Nazi. She is controlled and pressed. However she wants her own freedom.
She began to talk like a Jew and she thinks that she may well be a Jew. Her strike is to be the opposite side to her daddy.
In the end, she still called him daddy; I think it is her biggest emotional ambivalence.
“Daddy, daddy, you bastard!”
Her hatred and love make her ambivalent.
“Daddy, do you hear me?”
I consider that this poem “Daddy” condemns Plath’s father more than his husband. Plath sees his father’s leave as betraying her. Her father died when she was eight. This event really cruel to a little girl and became a trauma in her life afterward. We can see Plath’s ambivalent feeling between love and hatred. I think the “black shoe” in the first stanza means her father’s control on her; Plath lived under the shadow of her father and even didn’t dare to breath or achoo. In stanza 2, Plath wanted to kill her father, however, she wanted her father recover too in stanza 3. We can see many same examples in movies. For instance, the characters hate or offend their parents, however, they regret after their parents died then understand how much they love their parents. I think Plath is the same situation, though her father acted like Hitler and made her an unfortunate and broken family.
Because Plath’s father is a German, Plath imaged herself as a Jew in stanza 7 and oppressed by her Nazi father in many stanzas. Nevertheless, Plath tried to die when she was 20 because she wanted to back to her father in stanza 12. Sylvia Plath used this technique of ambivalent feeling to create her poem again and again, obviously missed and hated her father.
Sylvia Plath very loved her father; likewise, the emotion of hatred naturally became stronger. Her father died when she was little, it led to Plath couldn’t enjoy the love that her father could give her. In the first stanza, it mentioned black shoe and it revealed a tyrannical father’s shadow. Plath seemed be controlled on everything even breathing or sneezing. In the second and third stanza, she described her father as a giant figure, and it also showed how grandly her father existed in her mind. Next, in the fourth and fifth stanza, she tried to speak out the name of Polish town with German tongue, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know how to pronounce it due to her father’s death. Following, she imagined she was a Jewish who was abused by her father who had a German blood. In addition, Nazi was to Jew as her father was to Plath, so she associated her father with Hitler. They both had neat moustache. She also mentioned that her father had a cleft in his chin. If the cleft exists on foot, it just looks like goat’s hoof and it symbolizes evil. She wanted to express that her father was a devil through this. And, in the twelfth stanza, she wanted to commit suicide to stay with her dead father. It revealed the feeling of missing her father was so strong. In the next stanza, she made a model of her father and it meant she longed for a husband just like her father. From fourteenth stanza to the end, she was tortured by two men, one was her father and the other was her husband. Her husband had an affair. This made her feel desperate so she wrote down the rack and the screw which were torturous devices. Her father and her husband were just like two vampires which constantly drank her blood to the end of her life. She couldn’t get rid of them, thus, the rest of her life was covered with the shadow of them.
Line 1 to 10 is the setting in her mind starts out as the black shoe in which Plath claims to live, but which is actually a metaphor for her father
Plath creates a symbolic image of her father, using many different metaphors to describe her relationship with him. line 2 He's like a black shoe that she's had to live in; like a statue that stretches across the United States; like God; like a Nazi; like a Swastika; and, finally, like a vampire. Line 41 to 50 Plath faced with her father as a giant and evil Nazi, takes the part of a Jew and a victim.
Yet, with this poem, Plath gets her revenge, claiming that she's killed both her father and the man she made as a model of her father – her husband. No matter how terrible her father was and how much he remains in her mind, she is now through with him. line 80
According to the poem ‘’ Daddy’’ written by Sylvia Plath, the poet loved and hated her father as her husband. She confused that she still loved her father although she hated and fought against her father. She could not bear that her father betrayed her（dead）. In the poem, she was a girl with an Electra complex. On one hand, she described her father as a Fascist and Hitler but she was a Jew and was persecuted by her father. We can see in lines 26 to 35. It showed that the emotional ambivalence is between love and hate. And on the other hand, it mocked the history of oppressing the Nazi. ‘’ For thirty years, poor and white’’ implies that she was still threatened by her father’s imagination. Because of her father, she thought her husband was the same as her father. She killed both her husband and her father. She wanted to free herself from her father but she could not. In her deeply mental, she remained to live under her childhood. Her mental did not grow up. She could not forget the wound that her father caused because she not only hated but also loved her daddy.
In the Sylvia Plath's poem"Daddy", she overlops the image of her father and her husband. She loves her father very much, however, her father died when she was very young. In my own opinion, I think her father is the symbol of her young age, and her husband represents her later life. Love in Sylvia 's life is very important to her, it;s the whole life of her. Therefore, she put her father and husband in the same place to think.
She loves her father and also her husband, however, both of them are betraying her. Her father was died, her husband have an affair. So, she is very complicated by this condition, she loves them and hates them. In stanza 1to 5, Sylvia expresses her love to her father(and her husband) However, in the stanza 6 to 16, she expresses her hate to her father, and even uses many negative images to curse her father.(or her husband) For example, in line 29, "I thought every German was you. " or line 32 " Chuffing me off like a Jew." Sylvia metaphor her father is a German and herself is a victiom (Jew)
She even refers her father as Hitler. She blames her father is a devil. (or her husband)
In this poem, we may found out Sylvia loves her father and husband very much, even when she hates them very much ,she still can not give up her love to them.
Clare(49788026)
In this poem, Sylvia Plath showed her contradiction completely. She loved her father, even she called him "Daddy." "Daddy" this word, it is seems that she was still a little girl. She loved him, but what she got was nothing, she was afraid of his father's feelings, but beloved.
I am much impressing these two phases: "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" and "And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du"
Sylvia Plath seemed realized that her father if alive she would not go if the self-destruction. I think it is really awful. How could a girl puts all her spiritual reposing on her father. It is love to hate. In the end of the poem, Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through. In my opinion, it fulls of helpless.
There are two important man in Sylvia Plath's whole life.One is her father,and the other is her husband. In her poem-"Daddy",we can see her emotional ambivalence.First,the poem's tittle "Daddy"- is a father. It means that Plath loved her father very much. She imaged her dad as big as the whole area of North America from Frisco to Atlantic where she lived. Her father died when she was eight, but he still lived in Plath's mind and life.For Plath her father is like a giant who is powerfully to influtnce her. And her father was also a shadow coverd her life. But in next stanza Plath changed her whole love to hate. She got a superimposed image from Hitler to her father,and Plath was just like a Jew got a trauma from her father. Plath married a man who is just like her father. However,her husband had an affair with other woman. He betrayed Plath's love.So she wrote"And a love of the racle and the screw.And I said I do, I do." This line is talked about her marriage. And she said "If I've killed one man,I've killed two- ".She wanted to killed her father and husband. But finally she killed herself by exceeding sad.
In the poem, the speaker has the complex emotions to her father. In first stanza, we can know that her life is bad and she is afraid of her father. In next stanza” Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time”. She wants to kill her father, but she has no chance anymore. I think the event has the impact on her. Because her father died when she was young, she starts to hate her father. She feels that she was abandoned by her father. In line 53-54,” A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that.” She describes her father has some symbols of devil. However, she is still love her father virtually. We can see line 14”I used to pray to recover you.” In lines 58-59 “At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back you. Furthermore, she can not distinguish her father and her husband. Because her husband also do the same thing like her father, she sees the reflection on her husband. So, she loves and hates them as well.
The girl loves her father and misses him. But every time she looks him – is looking at his black shoes. Shoes are black and they stabilize girl’s heart (because they look like that could protect her) or stick her. The girl cannot face to the fact that her father is already died and wouldn’t back to her at her ten years old. She looks the Atlantic and images her daddy would back from that side. She pours bean green like a hope, which might pass her message to her daddy over the sea. But never.
The girl grows up. She understands wars and racial. Her daddy is a Nazi, but she might be a Jew. She starts to learn to be a Jewish. But she loves her daddy too much. She tries hard to follow her daddy, but failed. Then she finds a man who has some commons like her daddy’s. She marries him. Several years ago the man has an affair. The girl finds that her husband cheats her. And it is much similar like her father cheated her – father never back and he’s a Nazi. Girl does face the fact although the point is so miserable.
Sylvia Plath loved her father so much, however, her father died when she was eight so she hated her father much too. Because she thought her father betrayed her. In first stanza, Sylvia Plath refers to herself as a foot, and her father as a black shoe in which she has lived for thirty years. I think it is a kind of protection which Plath images her father protects her, and it also means she is controlled by her father. In second stanza, Plath is out of control because she wants to kill her father I think that is because her love has transformed to hatred. From fourth stanza to tenth stanza, Plath mentions that her father is German and she images herself is persecuted by her father constantly just like Jewish. So, she decided to become her father’s rival, to become a Jew completely. Therefore, the emotion of hatred to her father is become more and more strong. In eleventh stanza to fourteenth, Plath even thinks her father as a devil, but she tries to kill herself to be with her father and makes a black model of her father. From the following stanza, we can find Plath has confused her father and her husband, because both of them have lots in common, they are perfect but also betrayed her [her father’s die and her husband loves another woman]. Therefore, from the poet we can know why Sylvia Plath has such ambivalent emotion
Let's see this poem from the bottom first, in the second to last stanza, the speaker said, "I do, I do," and in the first to last stanza, "If I've killed one man, I've killed two." From these two sentences, we can realize that the speaker also had a husband, and she hated both of her father and husband. Because she loved her father in the one hand, she went to find a similar man like her father to be her husband; in the other hand, the speaker's husband betrayed her later, so she transferred the sence of hate to anther man who likes her husband, that is her father.
She wandered around these two men, and was fall in the sence of hate between them. From the repeated words, "wars, wars, wars," apparently sentence, "I have had to kill you," and thought her father was Nazi and she was a Jew, these things show the speaker's negative emotion toward her father. However, the speaker revealed she had tried to commit suicide after a decade of her father's death in the twelveth stanza. In the last stanza, after teased her father's body was steped by the villagers, she however said something sincerely, "I'm through" to show she still love her father.
“Daddy, I have to kill you. You died before I had time–” theses two lines reveal that the speaker’s love to her father. She loved her father but also hated him for his leaving. Leaving with never return. The emotion of sadness becomes hatred. Due to the speaker’s father is an ethnic German, she portrays herself as a Jewish, identify herself as a victim. A victim of World War II Nazi death camps and also a victim of her daddy’s death. After venting her anger on her father by accusing him as such a brute, she calmed down then wanted to get back to her father. ”At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you.” Failing to die for being along with her father, she found another way to get close to by finding a husband who is like her daddy. But the happiness didn’t come. She became a victim again. A victim of her marriage. In the last lines “Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” She finally get rid of the impact on her of her father’s death.
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