Sylvia Plath:"Daddy" The poem "Daddy" uses language to a great effect to express the bitterness and frustration endured by the writer Sylvia Plath after the traumatic death of her father. Sylvia's father Otto Plath was a German immigrant who was

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Sylvia Plath:

“Daddy”

The poem “Daddy” uses language to a great effect to express the bitterness and frustration endured by the writer Sylvia Plath after the traumatic death of her father. Sylvia’s father Otto Plath was a German immigrant who was a professor at Boston University teaching biology and German. It was said that Otto always wanted a son and when Warren, Sylvia’s Brother, was born two years later she began to pine for her father’s attention.

As a young girl, she was an excellent student and gained many prizes and was very charming and popular however she was also very desperate to redeem herself to her “daddy”. She writes about how she felt as she struggled to live up to the high standards set for her by her “arrogant” father. As we interpret this poem, not only are we, as the readers, reading the emotions, but begin to feel them. The frequent use of the word black throughout the poem conveys a feeling of gloom and suffocation: black shoe, so black no sky…, blackboard, black man etc.                              

 

In the first stanza, Sylvia reveals to us her own “so-called” status compared to her father.

“Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot…” Stanza 1, line 2.

This gives us the image of a big, black shoe with a small foot inside. It is metaphor for her father, the shoe, and of her, the foot. By disclosing the condition of the relationship between her and her father, we become aware of what we are actually going to be reading about. We often associate shoes with stepping and stamping and this is probably what Sylvia experienced from her father. How he may have stamped on her confidence.

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Later on in the poem she compares her father to the German Air Force and Hitler, himself:

“With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo

And your neat mustache” Stanza 9 line 2  

The Luftwaffe was from the World War 2 that caused severe devastation. The image of a bomb dropping from the plane on its victims could be seen as a contrast to the pressure and pride of her father killing Sylvia’s confidence. This would have enraged her. The use of the word “gobbledygoo” could be describing the German language in this case as Sylvia may not have understood ...

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