Sylvia Plath - MLA style

Sylvia, born of Otto and Aurelia Plath on October 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Warren, Sylvia’s brother was born April 1935, concidently around this time Otto Plath’s health took a serious turn. He believed he had cancer like a close friend who had recently died from lung cancer.

When Sylvia 8, her father passed away of Diabetes Mellitus (insulin dependant diabetes) out of ignorance, since insulin was discovered 20 years earlier by Fred Banting and Charles Best in 1920. At that time that type of diabetes could have been treatable with proper doses of insulin. Otto Plath’s death had a major influence on Sylvia’s life and the way she lived it, as shown in the poem “Daddy”.

Sylvia Plath’s at the age of 8, experienced the lost of her father. This obviously means she doesn’t know much him, whom he was or what he was about other than what was told her by her family, never knowing for herself.

The first stanza in this poem seems to be Plath striping down the disguises her family has put over her father. The black shoe could be a cover as the family might have been always telling Sylvia how great and brilliant her father was just to honor his memory. Sylvia w

I never could talk to you. (16-24)

Where it pours bean green over blue

In Irving Howe’s “The Plath Celebration: A Partial Dissent”, Howe states, that Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” is a kind of dispute between father and daughter whereas one is always striking at the other, “What we have here is a revenge fantasy, feeding upon filial love-hatred…” I cannot help but feel this is mostly accurate, I can imagine that if her father was alive all the conversations or arguments she would have had with him, maybe thorough her teenage years she may have called him names like Nazi or Devil, out of anger, even though those names are rather harsh. Maybe, Plath is making up for these missed times, or maybe she’s getting in the last word. Imagine, the opportunity she has, her father is dead he cannot fight back so no consequences are likely, she can therefore compare him and describe him to whatever she wants. The poem sounds like a speech, one of which would be rehearsed in ones head over and over, waiting for the perfect opportunity (in mid argument), to unleash this cannonball on her poor unexpecting father but what if her father died before she is able to do this? This is then the last word in their relationship.

Some topics in this essay:
Sylvia Plath’s, God Devil, Maybe Plath, Sylvia Plath, Otto Plath, Otto Plath’s, Pure-Aryan Germany, World War, God Swastika, Jews Nazi, sylvia plath, father god, family friends, otto plath’s, father died, married resembled, polish town, father daughter, whatever poem, resembles father,