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 Artemis--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. Use 200-250 words to describe/analyze some lines or imageries that for you illustrate this emotional ambivalence.
34 comments:
We all have an angel and a devil in our heart. I think the speaker and the daughter had struggled numberless times to think how should they treat their father. Their father was patriarchal, cruel and coldhearted. However, their father might have some characteristics that they respected and adored. They did not know how to deal with this contradictory problem so they wanted to end their fathers’ life. Because they thought they would get freedom. Until they determined to do such things, the memories belonged to the speaker, the narrator with their fathers’ came into their minds. They were tender- hearted and started to think their fathers’ greatness. Without their father, they might not have a sense of security and they might feel vacant because they lost something which was used to be important to them.
In our minds, we all have some complaints to our fathers. If we had too many negative emotions to our fathers, sometimes we would be covered by our own hatred and could not see their merits. When we get anger to someone, we always blind to their giving and hide our real nature which is kindhearted. When we really realize that we do something we will regret, it often doesn’t help any more.
In the third stanza, Plath writes that she “prayed” to “recover” her father. If she had hated him, she would not have used the word “recover”, given us a feeling of “healing” and “regaining of emotions” as if she wants her father, someone she hates, to return with a healthy body and to be as he used to be. Plath later on tells us that she has a picture of her father on the blackboard, someplace for her to frequently see his silhouette because she was a teacher and she had to use the blackboard when she teaches. She also says that she had tried to commit suicide at twenty to “get back” to him; she must have really loved him to want to be with him even after death. Afterwards, she also tells us that, being unable to be with her father, she “makes a model of him”—Ted Hughes—to marry. Yet the subsequent lines give us the impression of her hatred to her father—“daddy, I’m through”. She had wanted to be with him but now she’s saying she’s had enough and doesn’t want to be with him anymore. This is quite an ambivalent feeling—a mixture of love and hate.
If I were the poet, I would be very painful and struggling. I believe that everyone hopes their parents can depend on them growing up in life. In the second stanza, ’’Daddy, I have had to kill you.’’ I feel grieved and painful to the poet because her heart is overwhelmed to sorrow when she writes down this sentence. She wants to hate and complain about her Daddy but she can’t do that actually. Her Daddy died when she was a child. She can’t get father’s love and have a specific memory with her Daddy. I think when she suffers from pains or problems, she may pour out her emotions to her father. In the eleventh stanza,’’ You stand at the blackboard, in the picture I have of you.’’ I know she loves and misses her Daddy very much. She is ambivalent between her Daddy and her relationship. She lived a hard time for several years. She just wants to be released at that time. Every child will forgive their parents whatever their parents do. No parents will abandon their children without any reasons. Family’s love will always exist and not disappear. Cherish you family and concern who loves toy in your life.
In ‘’Daddy’’ we can find sign that Sylvia still love her father no matter there are many hatred words in the poem. She needs father’s love and care but her father left so early. Kind of dependence couldn’t satisfy her mind. Then she tried many times to suicide by herself was wanted to get there to be with her father forever. But so many times she couldn’t succeed. When she met Ted, Sylvia found out that he was very similar with her father. That she maybe can be with this guy to fulfill her satisfaction and sense of safety. She put expectation on him. Unfortunately, Ted betrayed her. Her belief had collapsed.
Those miserable encounters made Sylvia feel hatred. She hated her father depressed her that she could just live in his shadow in these thirty years. But we can discover that Sylvia wanted to bring her father back to life. She still loves him. It is very ambivalent. In the end, she understood and got through. Latter then made a decision.
When I first saw the title “Daddy”, I thought it was a warm poem. However, in the whole poem, I think Sylvia did describe how much she loved her father but she used a haunting way, and then there are fear and hatred came along with her love for father. In the first three stanzas, I think the poet described her respect to her father, and at the same time she felt pressured that she could not dare to breath or Achoo. She connected herself to a Jew, and her father to a German, the oppressor in the following stanzas. She turned her father from God to Nazi here. Though I think she felt more pressured, she still called him daddy. In the stanza twelve, she wrote that she wanted to get back to her father, and showed her will to die and to be with him. Nevertheless, she was failed so she found a model of her father, Ted Hughes whom Sylvia loved and hated, in the real life but then she actually suffered more. The most ambivalent part is the last sentence “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” “Daddy” is kind of a intimate title, but she used “bastard” at the same time. She revealed her love and hatred and pointed out the main idea of the poem.
As we see the title ”Daddy”, if one doesn’t love ones father, he or she would just call him Dad, or father, and won’t call him in such a sweet tone ”daddy”. So, she must love his father so much, though in the poem we think that she hates her father very much. For example, in the first stanza, I have seen that black shoe not only protect her but also show the darkness and restriction from his father. I can feel the strong ambivalence that Sylva Plath was struggled and she wanted to get freedom though home is shelter to everyone even her. Then she says that her father has a cleft, a man who is handsome also evil, so that let she was attracted, therefore, loves him a lot as well as hates a lot a the same time, we can also see her ambivalence. Next, in the fourteenth stanza, as we see “a love of the rack and the screw” how come would she love torture? And even so cruel the punishment of screw is! Then “ I am finally through”, that is she was finally okay and accepted it. Love the torture she suffered, and accepted it, if she doesn’t love her father, she wouldn’t accept it. It’s a strong love and hate band together in her heart.
After watching the video in the class, I think she lives under her father’s shadow throughout her life. From this poem, she uses several allegories to describes her father, such as “black shoes”, “marble –heavy, a bag full of god” and “Nazi”. We can clearly realize and experience her feeling of oppressed by her autocratic father.
In a literal way, we can judge that she hated her father bitterly, but if read this poem carefully, in line 58th, “At twenty I tried to died and get back, back, back to you” she wants to accompany with her father at any cost, even to die. We can see that she still love him from the bottom of heart. This also becomes the cause that she committed suicide many times.
I think she has trouble controlling her emotion to her beloved father, so she transformed her love and mourn into hatred because she thought that she was abandoned by her father. Likewise, she produced empathy when she found her husband had love affair with other. Because her father and husband are both betray her and they also have similar background, she regarded them as Nazi and she described herself as Jews.
In the second stanza, she said she wants to kill her father because she desires to be free. But in the third stanza, she prays to recover her father. In those stanzas, which reveal her love to her father and her desire her father to alive, if she really wants to kill her father, then she doesn’t pray to recover her father. And she always thinks her father is a obscene person like Nazi, she is pressed like a Jew. But she still wants to be along with him. In the twelve stanza, she said she likes to get back to her father by trying to die. Although she doesn’t succeed, but in part of stanza, we can see a lot of information that she like and miss her father very much though she often describe her father as a bastard. In this situation, I think she is very painful for her ambivalent mentality. But I think it’s great that she knows she like her father because some people will be eroded by hate then forget good things. When you struggle, that mean you still know what you have. Try to cherish what you have now, then you won’t have negative attitude to your life.
I want to analyse the poem “Daddy”. After reading this poem, I can sense a strong hatred within Plath’s words, and this can easily mislead us that Plath hated her father so much and she wanted to kill him. The title of this poem is “Daddy”, this is a word little girls use to call their father in a very intimate tone. Plath could just called his father that guy or bastard (which she did used at the last stanza), but she use daddy instead. I think this was one of the clues that Plath wants to show her love towards Otto Plath. In the first stanza, she describes herself as a foot and his father a shoe. When we think of a shoe, it a kind of protection, and it keeps us safe from the outer world; while the colour black refers to desolation and darkness, which Plath was bound to those angry and resented memories for thirty years. Black shoe was indeed an ambivalent image. I felt sorry for this poor girl, on the other hand, I couldn’t help but wonder, she could have freed herself thirty years ago, why she waited for so long?(I understand that it’s difficult to forget those terrifying past, but did she at least give it a try?) To me, it seems like she had secretly exposed herself that she was unwilling to escape.
In the tenth stanza, Plath wrote that “Every woman adores a Fascist” Plath is a woman too; she reveals that she loves her father and she enjoys being tortured. This stanza also mentioned how brutal Ted Hughes was and how he hurt Plath. And in the thirtieth stanza, Plath “made a model of you” she missed and loved her father so much that she projected her love onto her husband Hughes. At the last stanza, she said “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through” through here can have two different meanings: one was that everything is over, and you can get me anymore! Another one was don’t worry about me, I am fine now. Throughout this poem, I can finally realize how her complicated feeling with her father. And this was a great poem.
It’s a confessional poem, in which reveals true deep thought of Plath, a love-hate relationship toward two of her dearest lover, man in her life; they are beloved father and Mr. Hughes.
Perfectionist and Conservative as Plath, she is so in love with her solemn and patriarchy father, but the love is under being controlled pressure, the image of the “black” shoe, so dark, so heavy and so restraint. Sylvia would hope her father’s love is flawless in her memory, though he is dead; the memory couldn’t be wiped out, couldn’t escape from. She somehow is still under her father’s control, her heart still follows his rule; after growing adult, she finally have the right to choose her lover, to totally escape away and get rid of father’s shadow, but sadly, in the subconscious, she selected a similar person to compensate the hollow.
In this love hate interweaving relationship, she is so furious, so sorrow and so missed at the same time. The left of his father made Sylvia of course felt abandoned, how could you left me, if you love me like that, she would think; “you do not do, you do not do”! And obviously, “anymore”, because he is dead! Sorrow is always covered by indignation in advanced, or else the melancholy would be too big to bear, preventing from explode, replacing it by indignant is better; I may not think of it as hatred, who would really hate their parents?
A cleft, which is often associated with the devil’s hoofs, is compared to her father’s chin. This implies that the father had some demonic characteristics, which have Sylvia think of the evil and dark side of him, and to make it more reasonable to believe.
When facing too much downturn at a phase in her life, Plath felt that being dead, like her father, would be the simplest, least painful and saving time resolution to her desperation.
Sylvia Path creates a sight of a little girl and uses a first-person narrator to describe relationship between her and her father.
In the line eight,” Marble-heavy a bag full of God” and line eleven,” And a head in the freakish Atlantic” describe that father is holy and inviolable. To speaker, she wants to get closer and to realize more about her father (line fourteen “I used to pray to recover you), but still cannot find the way (line twenty-five” I never could talk to you.”)
Little by little, speaker discovers this relationship between her and her father is very conflicting and difficult to reconcile. So she starts to hate her father (lines twenty-nine and thirty “I thought every German was you. And the language obscene”), speaker hates her father just like Jew hate Nazi. She tries to fight against her father, but is afraid of him at the same. However, after her father’s death, she finds her grudge to father is an obsession that she can’t abandon, so she tries to commit suicide to follow her father (line sixty” I thought even the bones would do”)
Then she married a man who resembles her father, but she knows that she is done. (Line sixty-eight, “so daddy, I am finally through.”) She can’t mend relationship between her and father, also used to stay this situation torpidly that to be maltreated and can’t get away (line sixty-six “And a love of the rack and the screw”). Although she loves husband just like she loves father, also hates this vampire who weakens her spirit. (Line seventy-two,” The vampire who said he was you”)
Finally, I think this a horrible poem, I even can’t image to kill a person or your family, but also is a great poem that it is very successful in expressing a strong feeling to reader indeed.
In the first stanza, the black shoe and foot represent Sylvia Plath’s father and herself respectively. The black shoe is a typical symbol of an authoritative father. Shoe is fitting tightly around foot giving an association of protection but it is also a trap, which keeps smothering the foot. Sylvia Plath is like the foot in the black shoe protected and at the same time smothered by her father. In the second stanza, “Daddy, I have had to kill you.” is a rebellion against her father’s authority and it is also an emotional release from the grief and indignation of her father’s early passed away. The statue is memorial scenery, a figure molded by Sylvia Plath. In stanza nine and ten, the image of father is connected with the patriarchal frame. The period of time that she went through with her father is right under Nazi’s devastation. Here, the image of her father is replaced by panzer-man and the blue sky is in place of swastika. Her personal pain and the sorrow of times are seen in this poem. It shows that the worship toward her father turned into the accusation of this patriarchal society. This poem describes her complicated and ambivalent feeling toward not only love and hate for her father but also the pressure of fighting against the society.
In the first stanza, Sylvia Plath says that she is like a foot and her father is like the black shoe. She barely dare to breathe or achoo. We can see that she cares about her father very much and she regards her father as somebody who takes charge of her.
In stanza two and three, Sylvia Plath seems to be angry at her father. But she still respects him. She thinks of her father as a big person.
Sylvia Plath has a strong feeling about her father. On one hand, looks like she hates her father because the words of kill appear many times in the poem. And she even calls her father bastard in the end of the poem. I think that his father’s death has a deep influence of her life. She has a thought that her father causes her miserable life and her father’s death is like abandoning her. Just like her husband has done to her. She also put the hatred of her husband on her father, too. Her father is like a scapegoat who burdens her husband’s fault. On the other hand, Sylvia Plath still loves her father a lot. She doesn’t mention it, but we can tell from the word she uses to call her father- daddy. It’s an intimate way to call father. It’s an angry but sorrowful poem. There are struggles inside her heart, sadness of the death of her father and the anger of her husband’s betraying. Maybe this poem is a way for her to roar!
As we have seen, the speaker has a hard time talking to her father, and eventually stops trying. Yet, this entire poem is addressed to the speaker's father; with 80 lines, it seems she desperately wants to say something to him. But, remember, her father is dead, so there's no way she could possibly get through to him. The knowledge that her father will never read this poem is probably what enables the speaker to write it.
The speaker indicates that her German father is like a Nazi, and that she is like a Jew. This is a very powerful metaphor for how the speaker feels like she is a victim of her father, or perhaps for how she feels about men in general. But she doesn't come right out and call him a Nazi. Instead, she uses metaphors, imagery, and subtle wordplay to show us that he's like a Nazi.
At the end of this poem, the metaphor for the speaker's father and husband, and potentially all men, shifts from Nazis to vampires. These men go from being depicted as living horrors to undead horrors. We know that the speaker's father is dead, so it's super creepy to think that he's come back to haunt her as a vampire.
This is a contradictory poem which mixes up many emotions, and I can feel her memory of her father deeply affected her. In the beginning stanza, Sylvia describes that her father as a black shoe and she is the foot in it, she almost can’t breathe or sneeze for thirty years. In here Sylvia wants to express that there is an unfading shadow of father in her heart, because her father died when she was a young child, and this memory has affected her deeply until she is dead. In second and third stanza, she describes her father as God and tied him across American continent. Here means her father’s presence is very big and the image of father in her heart, I think she loves and respects her father although he leaved her early. But in sixth and seventh stanza, she describes her father as Hitler and she is a poor Jew. It looks like that she hates her father because of his patriarchy. But in my opinion, she just too loves her father so when he died, she feels betrayed because she can’t enjoy her father’s love and protection. Maybe this feeling reinforces in her mind while she is in a slump and faces her husband’s betrayal. While she needs protection and supports the most, her father isn’t in her side. I think if her father is alive while she faces those troubles, she would not suicide probably.
In the poem, Sylvia Plath let us feel that she was hated her father even want to kill him. But in the title of the poem “Daddy”, it may let us to think that is Sylvia Plath so hated her father? If she did not like her father how could she called him daddy? I thought that daddy is intimate name. If you call your father “daddy” that may mean that you love him so much. Sylvia Plath called her father “daddy” in the poem. But in the poem, she also mentioned that she wanted to kill her father. It can found that her feeling to her father is conflicting. On one hand, she loved her father. She used shoes to describe her father and used foot to describe herself. We all know that shoes and foots are intimate. On the other hand, she also used the German and Jew to describe her father and her.
In the second stanza, she wrote”you died before I had time”. It may let us feel that her father died too early then she have no time to kill him. But it may reveal that her father died let she felt that she was be abandoned. Like her husband abandon her. In the last sentence in the poem, she used “daddy” to call her father but she even used “bastard”. She loved her father but she hated him.
In the first stanza, Plath describes her daddy as a black shoe while she is like a foot lives in it. Although her daddy is like a prison making her smother, her daddy also represents the protection for her. The emotional ambivalence is obvious here. In the second stanza, we can know that her daddy is a big statue in Plath’s mind. The authority of her daddy is so strong that she sees him as an image of God. In the sixth stanza, Plath repeats”Ich” over and over again to express she can’t complete a sentence because she is afraid of her daddy. Being able to speak German, her daddy is just like a German torturing a Jew, symbolizing Plath. She must hate her daddy and want to run away from him, but in the tenth stanza, she says “Every woman adores a Fascist.” Does it mean that she likes to be tortured by her daddy? I think she is afraid of her daddy but adores him at the same time. He affected her very much. The emotional ambivalence makes her always think of her daddy and can’t escape from him. In twelfth stanza, she mentions she tried to commit suicide several times and she wants to get back to her daddy. The complicated emotion to her daddy is weird to me. She even made a model of him, her husband. She wants to free herself from them, but I think she still loves them even though they hurt her before.
The speaker indicates that her German father is like a Nazi, and that she is like a Jew. This is a very powerful metaphor for how the speaker feels like she is a victim of her father, or perhaps for how she feels about men in general. But she doesn't come right out and call him a Nazi. Instead, she uses metaphors, imagery, and subtle wordplay to show us that he's like a Nazi. The speaker uses a train engine as a metaphor for the German language, which her father speaks. The German word for a tank is "panzer," and the men who manned German army tanks were called "Panzermen," so this reference goes along with "Luftwaffe." The use of German subtly connects the speaker's father with Nazi Germany. The speaker's father changes from one metaphor – being like God – to another – being a swastika, the symbol of Nazism. At the end of this poem, the metaphor for the speaker's father and husband, and potentially all men, shifts from Nazis to vampires. The vampire has sucked the narrator's blood for seven years, probably the length of their marriage. This is a vivid metaphor for the pain that their relationship must have caused the speaker.
Stanza eleven: “Not God but a swastika/ so black no sky could squeak through/ every woman adores a Fascist/ The boot in face, the brute/ brute heart of a brute like you” suggests she desires to be dominated by dominating man, and she also says “I have always been scared of you.” This feeling extends. She describes her husband “And a love of the rack and the screw.” Something like that shows ambivalence. Her father imposes her a lot. Though he had died, he seems still powerful. This explains such an experience: “Marble-heavy, a bag full of God/ ghastly statue with one gray toe/ big as a Frisco seal.” Imagine a huge seal press on you, very unpleasant, very uncomfortable, (can’t breathe). She missed him; therefore she had made herself a husband. Was her husband her father? The last two stanzas seems overlapping the two: “If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two/ the vampire who said he was you.” Besides, “I’m through” is a little bit weird. The first “I’m through” (stanza 14) may not be too difficult. However, the second also the last sentence “I’m through” is very suspicious. Could it be a prophesying of her next action? As we know, she was never through. Two “I’m through” are also ambivalent. I don’t exactly know her uncertain emotions. This kind of woman is unpredictable. Such a replacement is never found a reason. Her heart’s broken, then, goes to kill two. This fantasy is finally in vain.
I think “Daddy” to Sylvia Plath has a strong image. She loves her Daddy just like other girls. They respect their father and regard them as God. But the relationship between the father and the mother may hurt little Sylvia Plath. Their conflict in racial and thoughts lead a terrible image in a child. I think children will forever love their parents but in the second stanza “’’Daddy, I have had to kill you. “, I see the opposite side. Sylvia Plath definitely loves her father and regards him as the God in her world but she use “I have had to kill you.”, it shows a deeper sorrow. It is a need. It shows the struggle between love and hate. It gives Sylvia Plath a hard time dealing with her emotional feeling. It finally makes her crazy in these two kinds of strong feeling. She also indicates her German father as Nazi, and herself as a Jew. She uses this strong complaint to her father. He makes her not free as she wants. She is a prisoner to him. I think these all complicate feelings. It takes Sylvia Plath’s poem a strange and crazy feeling. As a reader, I can easily feel her feeling through her poem.
The emotions conveyed still echo with a sense of what her father must have meant to her, such as when she refers to his dead body being carried away in a body-bag as a "bag full of God" (line 8) and when she laments, "I used to pray to recover you." Her father died at a time when she was so attached to him, and yet hadn't had enough time to get to know him. He was ripped from her grasp before she had time to break away on her own. The harsh resentment felt by the speaker is not directed at her father, but rather at the failed replacement, Tom Hughes. She describes her suicide attempt at the age of 20, confessing the reasoning behind such a course of action: "At twenty I tried to die/ And get back, back, back to you" (lines 58-59). It shows that she want to go back to her father, whom she loved. The poem has been interpreted by many to be a vengeful outcry against the grip her father has had on her since his death. However, it becomes apparent that Plath herself is the speaker in "Daddy" and the rage she expresses is aimed largely at Ted Hughes, her ex-husband, while she simultaneously mourns this final loss of her father. It is a poem in which the speaker tells of her father's early death in her life and the lingering effects it had on her, resulting in an unhealthy preoccupation with him and a desperate need to rid him from her life so she can finally move on.
We can realize that the emotion Plath expressed to her father was ambivalent in the poem “Daddy”. She lived a long time since childhood under her father’s oppression. In spite of the pain and fear she experienced while getting along with her father. She still wanted to accompany with her father at any cost, even to die. So, we can understand that Plath hated her father so much on the surface. On the other hand, she loved her father from the bottom of her heart. It seems like an ambivalent emotion. I think she has trouble controlling her emotion to her beloved father, so she transformed her love and mourn into hatred because she thought that she was abandoned by her father. As far as I am concerned, I think the relationship between Plath and her father is similar to the relationship between Plath and her husband. Both of them she loved so much but both of them hurt her deeply. I think she still loved both of them even when they betrayed her or deeply hurt her. In my opinion, she didn’t know how to deal with these ambivalent emotions. She denied to hate or hurt them and chose to hurt herself ultimately.
“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.”
In this stanza, we can clearly understand that how Sylvia Plath struggling. She did want to kill her father. On the other hand, she wanted her father to “be recovered”, which means to “be alive”. If she really hates her father, she won’t pray for him. She also understood that if her father didn’t die, she won’t live in such a great pain in her whole life.
I believe that how deep one loves, how deep she/he hates. It’s no doubt that love and hatred exist at the same time. In “Daddy”, we can learn about that Sylvia Plath loves her father so much even she used a lot of hatred words to express her struggling. Besides, she tries hard to transfer this kind of emotion to her husband but she still loved her daddy secretly. In my opinion, Sylvia Plath is constantly seeking a kind of dependence which she can rely on in her lifetime. She hates her father because she knew that there won’t be a perfect man as her daddy. That’s why she suffered a lot no matter in her adulthood but in her marriage with Ted Hughes.
The pain and conflict start with the father’s death. Father, for a daughter, is an important character in life. His behavior may change a girl’s life. Father is the first man whom the daughter meet. It may affect the daughter’s thought toward men. For Plath, her father left her when she was too little to take the sorrow. She felt lonely and abandoned. Maybe this is the reason that she finds the husband that a little bit similar to his father. And when Plath’s husband cheated her, she lost her power to defeat. I guess that is because she is scared to lose another man again. She didn’t want to suffer the loneliness anymore, she was so terrified, and so she lost her power. However, she hated this feeling at the same time. She wanted to struggle through the pain. Thus, she wrote the poem to express and release the painful feeling. I think I can resonate with Plath’s feeling. The feeling that the sense of lost becomes hatred because of anxiety. The emotional ambivalence is that wanting to get over it, but the childhood trauma stopped her from overcame. The only way to conquer the fear is that she herself face the wound, hill the hurt and then go beyond the shadow.
The poem, Daddy, is a response to Plath's complex relationship with her father. The speaker has fairly ambivalent feelings towards her father/her husband. In the first stanza "black shoe" is a metaphor that her father had imprisoned for thirty years, the pain such as bandages used in binding women's in feudal China. The first stanza use rhyme scheme resembling the style and structure of a nursery-rhyme. Sylvia Plath, introducing the poem for a BBC radio reading shortly before her suicide, famously described the poem as about "a girl with an Electra complex. Her father died while she thought he was God." Coupled with morbid imagery, the narrator's childlike intonation evokes a keen state of unease in the reader throughout the poem, climaxing in the final line "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through". "Daddy" deals with a girl's deep attachment to the memory of her father and the unhappiness it caused in her life. It can also be seen as an outlet for Plath to deal with her father's death or her husband's betrayal. She does this through reinventing the relationship as one between a Nazi and a Jew, creating an "oppressor-oppressed" dynamic. In the third stanza, speaker said her father's head is in the Atlantic and his foot is in the water off Nauset. It indicates her father imagery is strong in her mind. I think human being's emotion is complicated.
In one of Sylvia Plath’s poems, “Daddy”, there are two significant meanings in this simple title. Although the poem seems to blame her father for his death, it also shows Plath’s ambivalent emotions between her father and husband. The speaker portraits her father as a symbol of rebuking her husband for his cheating; furthermore, she tells reader how she suffers many tortures from male. For instance, she considers herself as Jew and Gypsy; these two races are persecuted by the other countries and suffer unfair treatment. Besides, the speaker also tells the readers about her hatred toward her husband like “the vampire who said he was you and drank my blood for a year, seven years”. The vampire symbolizes her husband and she realizes that her husband has lied to her for seven years. However, this poem is not merely about her hatred toward her husband; the reader can understand the feeling of missing her father. Although her father died and abandoned her when she was ten, she still misses him and portraits him as a bag full of God. In conclusion, Plath skillfully shows her hatred and yearning in this poem even though these emotions are contradictory to each other. Most importantly, the readers can truly understand what Plath’s ambivalent emotions are.
In the first stanza, I thought that she was very miss his father and want to find him back. A never wore shoes, which she live in carefully. In the next stanza, she said she want to kill him. But her father is “Marble-heavy, a bag full of god” saint and heavy in her heart. She want to tell him very much things, even want to find him again. Saying his language, walking in his hometown, she wants to be jew, to catch more intention from her father. She said every words to tell reader that she hate her father, but her every sentence show the love from her. She even said that her father live in her body. That was a kind of missing, her father giant shadow live in her mind. Harassing her whole the time. A sweet nightmare.
Shawn said:
In my opinion, I classify some images that the narrator defines her father.
First, within the first lines, Plath refers to herself as a foot, and her father as the black shoe which she has lived for so long. When one thinks of a shoe and the association usually is made that the shoe is worn as a kind of protection, and thus I think the imagery of her father in this way may imply that she has felt protected living in his memory.
Second, the speaker refers to her father as a God figure, and she doesn’t give him enough credit to be God, but he is composed of aspects which one associates with God.
And there are instances in Daddy that Plath reverts to a German and Jewish theme. She refers to a Holocaust scenario by portraying herself as the Jew, who is being transported to the death camp, and her father as the German soldier in command of the operation.
Third, Plath introduces her father as the devil. This suggests that the father has some demonic characteristics associated with his physical form.
Last, the association of the villagers could be attributed to the speaker’s family, and different aspects of her own personality. Whatever the case is, these final lines make the case for the strong sense that this man’s behaviors, or possibly his physical death alone, were hated.
Everyone deserves to grow up with two living parents ideally, but Plath didn’t have such opportunity when her father died at her age of eight. In this poem, Plath, as the speaker, is having a one-way conversation with her father to express all her feelings, anguish and how much she tried to compensate for his death. Furthermore, the extent to which her father’s memory affected her is particularly obvious when she says, ‘At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.’ Refer to her attempted suicide that shows the extent of her love for her father, Plath was trying to get back to her father in death. Besides ‘man in black with a Meinkampf look’ whom she wrote about is her husband. She described this man as somebody who had reminded her of her father. This poem is strikingly descriptive and metaphorical with allusion to Plath’s father. We can see her lover for her father is revealed and how important her father meant to Plath.
I think Plath is still love more than hate to his father. The reason why she shows her strong animosity in the poem and why she can’t step out her father’s shadow is that because she loves her father so much, she even can’t stop thinking about him. In the first stanza, “Barely daring to breathe or Achoo” shows that she feels oppressed by his father. In the sixth stanza, she uses some words like “barb wire snare”. The words represent that she lives in a constraint. “I thought every German was you” expresses a strong feeling. She thinks her father is Nazi. She thinks he is too brute and cold. She desires a very warm and gentle father. So, she considers her father is very horrible. However, I don’t think her father is just like what she describes. I think her father’s love is very different from others’ love, she should not make her father like anyone else. In the twelfth stanza, she wants to get back to his father. She is trying to suicide. Her emotion turns to be sorrow and painful. Even she shows some very creepy words to describe her father. She wants to shape her father as a brute-hearted Nazi and she is a poor Jew. I notice she remember her father’s everything so deeply that she can describe so clearly about his appearance, his voice, his personality. However, I think she doesn’t understand her father’s heart anymore.
I think Plath is still love more than hate to his father. The reason why she shows her strong animosity in the poem and why she can’t step out her father’s shadow is that because she loves her father so much, she even can’t stop thinking about him. In the first stanza, “Barely daring to breathe or Achoo” shows that she feels oppressed by his father. In the sixth stanza, she uses some words like “barb wire snare”. The words represent that she lives in a constraint. “I thought every German was you” expresses a strong feeling. She thinks her father is Nazi. She thinks he is too brute and cold. She desires a very warm and gentle father. So, she considers her father is very horrible. However, I don’t think her father is just like what she describes. I think her father’s love is very different from others’ love, she should not make her father like anyone else. In the twelfth stanza, she wants to get back to his father. She is trying to suicide. Her emotion turns to be sorrow and painful. Even she shows some very creepy words to describe her father. She wants to shape her father as a brute-hearted Nazi and she is a poor Jew. I notice she remember her father’s everything so deeply that she can describe so clearly about his appearance, his voice, his personality. However, I think she doesn’t understand her father’s heart anymore.
In the poem, Sylvia Plath expresses her strong feelings through lines to lines, for which I have a liking. Different from other poets’ poems, Sylvia Plath’s poems always give direct and evident feelings and emotions she wants to manifest to her readers.
Because of her background, she lived with an odd, ambivalent, and complicated mood.
She somehow shows her hatred to her father; however, the indisputable fact that she indeed loves her father also appears in the poems, too. If I were in Sylvia Plath’s shoes, I think I would like to try to forgive my father, for living with such extremely different feeling to the same person is very painful.
Why should I punish myself with that painful emotion? Therefore, I prefer to pardon my father; meanwhile, I am capable of freeing myself of the mind-forged manacles.
In my perspective, I take a liking to Sylvia Plath's poems because there are many poems produced by some famous poets who like to use too many metaphors in their poems, which makes us feel hard to understand or experience what the poets really want to tell us,readers. And Sylvia Plath's poems use simple words but shows not simple meanings. In the poem, Daddy, she expressed her strong anger toward her father and mentioned or described his father as a Nazi. The way she narrate this poems is very special and unique, especially in that times of period. A woman dare to express her own feeling with such strong words and the one she scolded should be her father! I think, an living environment is indeed important for people. Because of growing up in that kind of family, Sylvia Plath was cultivated to that kind of woman. If I were her, I think I will never forget my father for what he had done to me.
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