The tone of her poem is very solemn and dreary. When her father died, it was due to a disease that was completely treatable. He simply refused to be treated for his condition, and died leaving his ten-year-old daughter behind. What Sylvia could never understand was why her father chose to die when she needed him so much. This is the problem that creates the tone of the poem. In her mind he chose to leave her behind.

She begins her poem by comparing her feelings of her father’s death to a black shoe that encloses her from the world, and how this shoe can no longer trap her. “Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-“ (Line 6-7). Right from the start, before she gets into her past feelings, she wants us to know that she is breaking fr

How could her father represent something so awful to her? Plath says” I have always been scared of you,”(41). She calls him “A man in black with a Meinkampf look”(65).

ee from her own personal prison, and killing the fears she has been holding onto since her fathers death.

These feelings she harbors are very powerful, and she picks a powerful topic to compare them with. The terrible reign of Adolf Hitler seems appropriate for her, to emphasize the power of what she feels her father has done to her. However, she does not come right out and state this. It is alluded to very slowly. She begins by placing a few German words into the poem, then moving on to talking about Polacks. She transitions into the next step of her story so smoothly, that you will not notice her clues unless you watch carefully. Plath says, “ I think I may well be a jew” (35), and comes right out and lets you know where she is going with her comparison. She then goes on to tell us how many ways her father’s actions are just like those of the Nazi’s, wanting us to believe that he has committed a terrible wrong against her. A wrong that can never be healed. One tha

Some topics in this essay:
Adolf Hitler, Sylvia Plath, Critical Analysis, tone poem, father’s death, chose leave, father chose, black shoe,