The recurrent use of the words 'shoes' and 'feet' in this poem are strong metaphors that take on different meaning as the poem proceeds. In lines two and three, "you do not do any more, black shoe in which I have lived like a foot", Plath compares herself to a foot living in a shoe, the shoe being her father. The shoe protects the foot and keeps it warm but, like a double edged sword, also traps and smothers the foot. Later in the poem the shoe is called a 'boot' when the father is found to be a Nazi.
In the sixth and seventh stanzas Plath describes her father as a Nazi, "I thought every German was you". She calls her father a Pollack and says she is the jew "I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew". Plath never had the chance to embrace her nationality, and felt resentment towards this separation from her father. She uses 'barb wire' metaphor to illustrate this, explaining how she never felt she could talk to him, that she could hardly speak. In the ninth stanza Plath compares her father to Hitler, "your neat mustache and your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man". Plath says that her father was not God but a swastika, that she has always been scared of him, and she felt like she was being sent away from him, "Chuffing me off like a Jew”. In lines 53 and 54 Plath not only compares her dad to Hitler but to the devil as well.
In the twelfth stanza, the poem takes a different direction and splits into a whole other story. Ten years after her fathers death Plath is still in mourning and tries to physically replace his presence in her life. She married a man who had the same look and traits as her father, "I made a model of you, a man in black with a Meinkampf look and a love of the rack and screw. And I said I do, I do". Plath uses imagery to describe her husband as a 'vampire' an image or reflection of her father, a weaker or paler version of him who still haunts her long after his death. She again uses imagery when saying that this vampire drank her blood for seven years- Plaths marriage of seven years had drained her of life and energy. He was a brute force that oppressed Plath and hurt her, just like her father, and she in turn killed him.
The mood and tone of the poem Daddy reflects the anxiety that was prevalent during the Cold War. The structure of the poem is similar to that of a nursery rhyme which reveals Plath's child mentality. The predominant rhyming scheme such as shoe', Achoo' and du' as well as the structured stanzas make the poem more powerful in the sense that it gives the poem more structure and thus it connotes that Plath is attempting to regain power and control after suffering from the aftermath of the death of her father. This can be linked back to the psyche of the people during the Cold War as uncertainty was predominant during that time and people were trying to re-establish control over their lives. There are also elements of aggression within the poem where the language of the poem changes from infantile to a more authoritative tone and the pronouns switches from I' to you'. This restates the previous point where Plath is attempting to re-establish control while at the same time, blaming her father for abandoning her. The feeling of abandonment and loneliness is also reflected in the context in which she was writing in as the psyche of the people at that time was that they started to doubt the existence of God and that they were all alone in the universe. The use of phonetics also contributes to the aggressive nature of the poem, with the use of harsh words like ich' and ach du'.
The themes prevalent in this poem are oppression and emancipation. The notion of oppression is evident when Plath uses the metaphors Nazi' and Jew' to describe her father and herself. This imago connotes that she is dependent on her father for survival as well as the fact that she is battling an internal war inside her and that she at this point, is a victim because of her father's abandonment.
It was until Plath entered her marriage, and realized the connection between her husband and father, that she was able to see her father for what he truly was. For as Plath grows older she begins to resent who he was to her, and the tone changes from a child's to that of a fiercer woman, strong with attitude. She states in the last three stanzas, "So daddy, I'm finally through" and again in the last line, "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through". It seems as though, at the end of the poem, Plath was finally able to resolve her conflict with herself and her father.
