Preview

Daddy By Sylvia Plath Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
861 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Daddy By Sylvia Plath Essay
Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘Daddy’ expresses the struggle for female identity by basing it around the Holocaust, one of the most gruesome, immoral events in the whole of history. Plath uses this event as a metaphor for her struggles in life, and the struggles of women in general for independence. The male figure used in this poem is in the shape of Hitler, a man of unfathomable evil.
In this poem, ‘Daddy’ is seen as a Hitler figure during the metaphor of the Holocaust. He is seen as oppressing the female population, and Plath as a figure in her poem, in comparison to the way Hitler oppressed the Jews. “Marble-heavy” is used to describe this figure, weighing down upon the females, making them struggle for female identity and independence. The adjective
…show more content…
Linking to this would be the line, “Chuffing me off like a Jew.” implying even further that she felt oppressed by her Hitler-like father, in the way the Jews did during the Holocaust in the 1940s. “I think I may well be a Jew.” This backs up the metaphor of the Holocaust, as Plath is expressing her feelings of being part of a minority group, due to her being a woman. She feels like she must fight for her right to be independent, because of her oppressed past and the way she was treated by her father. Her fear of this ‘Daddy’ figure is expressed throughout the poem, in stanza nine she tells of this fear explicitly. “I have always been scared of you” in which the reader can see that she was worried about fighting for her rights as a woman purely because of her being “scared”. The lexical choice of “scared” makes the reader question her life and the treatment of her by this male figure, possibly in her past, before he died. Stanza six, line two, “Ich, ich, ich, ich” uses the German word for ‘I’. The repetition of this word possibly highlights her struggles to talk to the ‘Daddy’ figure and express how she feels. It could also be said to be representing a chocking motion, hindering her speech, showing relative frightened emotions of talking to this

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The poem “Daddy” was written in 1962. Sylvia Plath discusses her love/hate for father and others using imagery from the Holocaust, Nazis, and vampires. The title of the poem suggests that it is loving and intimate, more so than if it were titled “Father”. That is where love is present. Hate and anger are present everywhere else in the poem.…

    • 1791 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The speaker refers the rest of the villages as a group ‘they are all gloved’ (l.3), ‘they are smiling’ (l.4) and ‘everybody is nodding’ (l.12) where this group of people are always doing things together in exception of her. She also uses absolutes like "all" signifying sense of being left out. Plath also conveys vulnerability through straightforward phrases like ‘I have no protection’ (l.3) and ‘nude as a chicken neck’ (l.6). The use of anaphora and repetition shows a panicked reassurance that she doesn’t fear loneliness and enhances her declaration of fear – ‘will not smell me fear, me fear, my fear’. In contrast, it is significant to see how the Sheep ends with ‘a dark water’ (l.15) in Plath’s Sheep in Fog, which remains to be mysterious and unable to be seen through the murky waters. This emphasizes a sense of superiority into its observers. While the observers are capable of seeing their own reflection through the black water, they are unable to break into the speaker’s identity, who is not able to see through the dark water. This indicates the speaker is not being vivid about their appearance to others because they themselves are not completely confident in who they…

    • 442 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sandra Cisneros’s essay, “Only Daughter” is an autobiography about being raised in a family of six brothers, and how she is desperate for her dad to accept her for whom she is, and what she has become, a writer. “When he was finally finished after what seemed like hours, my father looked up and asked: where can we get more copies of this for the relatives?”(114). In this quote, Cisneros’ dad really shows how proud he feels towards his daughter and how much he enjoyed her story, making Cisneros feel appreciated. In Amy Tan’s short story, “Mother Tongue” she writes about how she is passionate for all the different types of English that she is capable…

    • 1111 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hughe’s articulate and diversely structured poetry regarding Plath and their association encourages the audience to understand the situations within their relationship from his perspective. Hughe’s poem, ‘Sam’ is his version of Plath’s ‘Whiteness I Remember’ reflecting on the memory of a horse riding incident. A variety of techniques are used throughout the poem creating conflicting textual form, including the use of rhetorical questions, ‘Did you have a helmet? How did you cling on?’Immediately this personalizes the poem as if he is talking to Plath herself. The tone and emotive language during the poem also intensifies Hughe’s sentiment towards Sylvia. Imagery is used frequently throughout the text, and in conjunction with alliteration, ‘that horribly hard swift river’ reinforces the intensity of the situation and involves the audience by allowing them to visually imagine the scene, dramatising the situation from Hughe’s position.…

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    During the holocaust, many people suffered due to the loss of their loved ones. The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel tells the story of what those who did not meet Hitler’s expectations while creating a superior race had to endure at the concentration camps. Thesis By using symbolism and setting, Wiesel creates the message that love is sacrificed in order to survive.…

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    “Elm”, written about her toxic marriage to poet Ted Hughes, mainly focuses on her struggle to recover from her husband’s infidelity. However, much like many of Plath’s other pieces, elements of the poem can be interpreted as referring to her ongoing battle with depression. A prime example of Plath’s writing that can be interpreted in different ways is the line “I am terrified by this dark thing/ That sleeps in me” (“Elm” 31-32). Many choose to interpret this dark thing as her remaining love for her husband. Since the idea of love directly correlates to the overall theme of the poem, this is a popular interpretation of what the “dark thing” is referring to. However, considering Plath’s mental state at the time of writing, it can also be argued that the dark thing “sleeping” inside her is more likely the personification of her depression. Other lines in Sylvia Plath’s “Elm” reference both her heartbreak and her depression at the same time. Plath writes, “I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets”(16). By this, she means that she has had to suffer through the horrific ends of beautiful experiences. The most obvious of these beautiful sunsets that ended tragically is Plath’s marriage to Hughes. This metaphor can apply to more than just her relationship, however. It can also be applied to her life. Plath’s early life was, for…

    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    As Sylvia Plath described about the poem “Daddy,” she said that the poem spoken by a girl with Electra complex. Her case was more complicated by the fact that her father was a Nazi, and her mother was possibly part Jewish. This part is the thing that made me so confused because at that time of her life, 1932 to 1963, was the time that the Holocaust happened, 1941 to 1945. The Holocaust was a genocide in which about six million European Jews were killed, included 1.5 million children, by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, and the World War II collaborators with the Nazis. As the…

    • 769 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the short but gripping memoir named “Night,” author Elie (Eliezer) Wiesel deeply reflects on his experiences in various concentration camps with his father during the Holocaust. Before the Jews were shipped off to incessant fear and starvation, Elie’s father didn’t have a significant relationship with his family, particularly Elie. After they were shipped away and got separated from the females in their family, however, Elie and his father became close and by the end of the book, they were each others’ strength. “Night” shows a distinct change of relationship between Elie and his father: it goes from a felt obligation to more of an emotional attachment because of the circumstances they endured together during the Holocaust.…

    • 788 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Maus Essay

    • 871 Words
    • 4 Pages

    When learning of the devastations of the Holocaust we are often only offered one side of the story, one view of the event, one account of the pain—that of the direct survivor. However, the effects of trauma live on forever, and stay with people even when they are not first-hand victims. In particular, there are children of Holocaust survivors or second-generation survivors whom face enormous difficulties as they come to terms with the horrendous plights faced by their ancestors. For Art Spiegelman, author of Maus, this was the struggle. Growing up with survivor parents exposed him to the presence and absence of the Holocaust in his daily life, causing confusion and great amounts of self-imposed guilt and blame. This havoc led to an underdeveloped identity early on—a lost and prohibited childhood, a murdered one. The effect of having survivor parents was evident in Art’s search for his identity throughout Maus, from the memories of his parent’s past and through the individual ways in which each parent “murdered” his search to discover meaning.…

    • 871 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Plath’s first poem in her venerable bee sequence, The Bee Meeting, offers fertile insight into the speaker of the poem’s struggle to adopt a voice in society and begs the ultimate question about women’s capacity to successfully break the chains of conformity. Plath’s multi-pronged approach addresses the poem’s persona’s confrontation with many social dichotomies. The most basic example of this duality is the fact that the speaker can’t distinguish between the surreal and the real. The first three stanzas begin with haunting rhetorical questions that leave her feeling “naked” and confused. Then, there are bizarre sequences in the poem like the “scarlet flowers” she mistakes as “blood clots” and the “apparition” of “surgeons and butchers,” representing the social limitations she endures in the attempt to release her internalized emotions. Her incapacity to discern what is real is a powerful metaphor that she exhibits throughout the piece and is analogous to the duality of power and impotence in her attempt to find autonomy. The poem’s pace grows more ominous in the central stanzas as she admits “I cannot run” as “smoke rolls” and “villagers” “hunting the queen,” adding a mystic horror the persona endures. She feels paranoid and caught between her imaginative voice and incapacity to express it.…

    • 1142 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s piece, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (written in 1890, published in 1892), is a semi-autobiographical piece that, although believed to be a result of her severe postpartum depression, illustrates the difficulties faced by women during the Women’s Movement. These difficulties are further illustrated by the similarly semi-autobiographical poem, based on Plath’s father and husband, “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath (written in 1962, published in 1965). These gender roles are then reversed in “Editha,” (written in 1898, published in 1905) which has been said to be William Dean Howells’s response to the Spanish-American War. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath and “Editha” by William Dean Howells all illustrate the conflict in gender roles during the Women’s Movement in 19th and 20th Centuries.…

    • 2115 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Sylvia Plath Research Paper

    • 4554 Words
    • 19 Pages

    Plath 's poetry is full of symbols and allusions cryptic to those unfamiliar with her biography, so it is necessary to begin any analysis of her work with a brief account of her life. Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932 near Boston and for much of her childhood lived near the sea, which finds its way into many of her poetic images (Barnard 14). Her father, Otto Emil Plath, was an immigrant from Germany and her mother, Aurelia Schober, a second generation Austrian American (Barnard 13). Allusions to her German heritage and to World War Two era Europe abound in her work.…

    • 4554 Words
    • 19 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Poetry Essay

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages

    As the poem continues on, Sylvia Plath goes on to describe the anger and resentment from the child towards the father. A strong example of this is when the child begins to compare the father to many things that can be perceived as unkindly. The first thing the father is compared to is Hitler. “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——” This stanza describes, in appearance, the likeness of Hitler and the father. The father is then compared to the devil in the lines, “A cleft in your chin instead of your foot; But no less a devil for that, no not; Any less the black man who…” This section describes the father as no better than the devil. The final comparative for the father is that of a vampire, sucking the blood, or life from…

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Paper

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In “Daddy” By Sylvia Plath the young girl is expressing her love hate relationship with her deceased father. The father is abusive towards the narrator in the poem never really paid any attention to her. The young girl shows hate towards her father because she never has the chance to get to know her father because he died when she was seven years old.…

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Specific examples of how the female persona is saying that she has an inappropriate sexual attraction to the cruel male figure without directly stating this fact are examined. This article provided new insight on how to investigate Sylvia Plath’s poem Daddy. This article also support my thesis through the domination of the female persona in the poem she is also experiencing sexual desires of her father.…

    • 1156 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays