Death And Redemption: An Analysis Of Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”

Sylvia soon turned to poetry as a means of dealing with the emotional void left by her father’s death. She continued, though, to excel in school and was awarded a scholarship to study at Smith College in 1950. Despite her success, anxiety and depression still followed her and she was consequently treated with shock therapy as a last resort. The treatment was not successful and in 1953, she tried to take her own life and was eventually put under the care of a psychiatrist. She returned to college and graduated in 19

55, receiving a Fulbright scholarship to study in Cambridge, England. It was there that she met her husband, Ted Hughes, the British poet laureate. She returned to America to teach at Smith and watched as her husband became a successful writer while her career waned. In 1959, they went back to England and had two children. Three years later, in 1962, Sylvia learned of Ted’s infidelities and filed for divorce (Exploring).

One set of symbols used by Plath to set the tone for the poem is found in recurring references to the “foot” and “boot” as well as other images relating to the foot, such as “shoe”, “toe” and “root”. It is with this image of the foot that Plath gives the reader an image of it as an overpowering force, indicating the significance that this event has played in her life. In the first stanza’s line, “You do not do, you do not do/ Any more, black shoe/ In which I have lived like a foot/ For thirty years, poor and white,” she is letting her feelings of sublimation be known to the reader immediately. Plath goes on to give her reasons for these feelings in the next stanza, which brings up her father’s death. Again she uses a “foot” reference when she says, “Ghastly statue with one gray toe,” to convey the nature of her suffering as it relates to her father’s amputated, gangrened toe which caused his death. She is indicating that by dying, her father has left her to dwell in his absence. She puts the responsibility on him for the massive anxiety she deals with as a result of his death. To further illustrate her inability to deal with her father’s absence, she goes on to convey how hard it was to communicate with her father even in life, as enumerated in the line, “So I never could tell where you/ Put your foot, your root,/ I never could talk to you.”

Some topics in this essay:
Exploring Sylvia, Edward Butscher, Jew Jew, University October, Plath’s Holocaust, Hughes Nazi, Sylvia Plath, David Holbrook, Smith College, Hughes British, ich ich, father’s death, ich ich ich, rhyme style, husband ted, i’ve killed, otto plath, nursery rhyme, father nazi jew, victim’s role, feelings victimization, husband ted hughes, nursery rhyme style, ted hughes,