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Daddy by Plath - A Paradoxical Relationship

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             The speaker then admits her fear of her father after she expresses the idealized image of him. "I never could talk to you/ the tongue stuck in my jaw" (line 24-25). There is a return of the rhyme and the obsessive angry voice. The oo rhyme strikes a keynote of the poem. It raises the rhyming pitch of repetition and effectively drowns out the "I". The "I" symbolizes the speaker. Thus, the child's intimidation of her father is very clear. However, the next line melds into suggestion of the Jewish persecution and terror: "It stuck in a barb wire snare/ ich, ich, ich, ich/ I could hardly speak" (line 26-28). The jaw becomes a barbed wire of concentration camps and the repeated "ich" of the German language recalls the sound of the engines carrying the Jews to the camps. Even though "ich" means "I" in the English language, the speaker uses the phrase because "ich" aspirates at the end syllable. This gives the reader a sense of sighing and lengthen that clarifies the speaker's feeling. The language is now obscene to the speaker because of the relation to the Holocaust. The continuous historical references allows her to dramatize her rebellion against her oppressive father. .
             The speaker's relationship with her father has transformed to a Nazi-Jew bond. The speaker's comparison of herself to a Jew hauled off "to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen" is chilling to the reader. .
             The next lines: "I began to talk like a Jew/ I think I may well be a Jew" ( line 34-35). The speaker represents herself as the victim because in the historical context Jews were inferior during the war. Also she claims to be very different from her father based on those ethnic characteristics. "With my gyspy-ancestress and my weird luck" (line 38). Instead on focusing on her childish perspective she dwells on the mixed ethnicity of her connection with her father.


Essays Related to Daddy by Plath - A Paradoxical Relationship

1. daddy by Plath

Unfortunately, this attempt to deal with her father's death backfired when it turned out that Hughes was, in Plath's eyes, an authoritative figure that Plath repeatedly compares to a Nazi and a vampire. ... This is an apt analogy for what Plath must have perceived towards the end of her marriage: that her husband, whom she viewed as another loving "Daddy," was in fact an imposter, a body snatcher who "bit" her father and stole his identity, a dictator hiding in her father's form. ... The last line, "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through" (line 80), is spoken in a similar s...

  • Word Count: 1245
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

2. Daddy by Sylvia Plath

Daddy Sylvia Plath 1932-1963 Sylvia Plath wrote "Daddy" just four months before her death by suicide in February 1963. ... Daddy is a confessional style of poetry, used by the writer as an outlet for pent up feelings of the love/hate relationship she had with her father and the guilt she experienced from it. ... "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I"m through." ... In February 1963, Sylvia Plath chose death over life. ... Revising Life: Sylvia Plath's Ariel Poems. ...

  • Word Count: 771
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: High School

3. Poetry Analysis - Daddy by Sylvia Plath

The livid, frustrated poem, "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, is about a young woman who is forced to remember the death of her father. ... Like much of Plath's poems, "Daddy" is encased in metaphors and hyperboles. ... Sylvia Plath is a writer who conveys meaning through vivid poems, and "Daddy" is no exception. "Daddy" is a poem that contains the ability to empower Plath's readers and allow them to gain an understanding of her speaker's thoughts and emotions. ... Plath had a hard life and an even harder relationship with her father. ...

  • Word Count: 994
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

4. Daddy by Sylvia Plath

My viewpoints are: involvement, affection and influence are always the three keys to a father-child relationship. ... In fact, numerous studies have reached the same conclusion: Children with involved fathers have an advantage socially and academically over children with distant or no relationships with their dads. In the poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, we encounter a woman of mixed feelings because she didn't feel loved or affectionate by her father. ... "Daddy I have had to kill you" the sadness that she felt after her father's death was overbearing, and that line...

  • Word Count: 736
  • Approx Pages: 3
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5. Sylvia Plath - MLA style

Analysis of "Daddy" written by Sylvia Plath Sylvia, born of Otto and Aurelia Plath on October 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. ... Otto Plath's death had a major influence on Sylvia's life and the way she lived it, as shown in the poem "Daddy". ... I believe that Plath thinks her relationship between her and her father is so far gone it's the same for the Jews and the Nazi. ... This is then the last word in their relationship. ... I just see "Daddy" as a situation between a father and daughter where a relationship barely started and was never resolved properly, leaving dang...

  • Word Count: 1385
  • Approx Pages: 6
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

6. Plath Poetry

Plath's relationship with her husband, poet Ted Hughes, was not much healthier. ... It is through such poems as "Daddy" that Plath expresses her feelings of malice toward her father and husband for the way that they treated her. ... This is evident in Plath's continued use of the word daddy and her childlike repetition of words: "You do not do, you do not do" and "Daddy, daddy, you bastard." ... In the poem "Daddy," Plath announces her rebellion from the oppressive forces and ties that have held her back throughout her life. ... Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I"m through. ...

  • Word Count: 1043
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

7. critical essay of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath parallels her own life in the poem, "Daddy"". ... At the end of the poem she seems to give up totally on trying to get over him, "Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through."" ... Since Plath viewed her father as the perfect male being, she chose a husband exactly like him states Bundtzen, "she marries a man in his [daddy's] image."" (357). ... Even in personal relationships and marriage she can't get away from her father's perfect image in her mind, because she doesn't have a desire to. ... Perhaps the most obvious selection in the whole poem that shows h...

  • Word Count: 659
  • Approx Pages: 3
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8. The Familiar and Unfamiliar - Poems of Sylvia Plath

'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, Barely daring to breath or Achoo', is the opening description provided by Plath of her circumstances in 'Daddy'. ... Plath's focus ont eh use of the familiar to consider the unfamiliar is furthered by the specific use of Nazi imagery to describe continuity in her relationship to patriarchal suppression. ... In a direct reference to her male relationships, Plath writes after her suicide attempt; 'I am your opus/ I am your valuable/ The pure g...

  • Word Count: 2183
  • Approx Pages: 9
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

9. Sylvia Plath - Her Life, Her Poetry

Effectively, the poems "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" are some of Plath's most famous creations that portray her life very well and defined what she had been through throughout her life. ... They got married in 1956 and had a turbulent relationship ("Sylvia Plath"). ... In this poem, Plath uses figurative language such as imagery and allusions to describe the relationship she had with her father. ... In the same order of ideas, the poem "Daddy" is not the only creation by Plath that reflects her past. ... The tough relationships that she had with her ...

  • Word Count: 1622
  • Approx Pages: 6
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

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