Confessions and Conflict in Sylvia Plath's Daddy

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As is true of many Sylvia Plath’s poems, “Daddy” is deeply ingrained in her life experiences. It emphasizes her complex, multidimensional relationship with Otto Plath and the traumatic effect of his death. The speaker despises her late father for his abandonment, yet attempts to achieve independence from this figure who causes much pain and suffering. Through this poem’s structure, themes, and imagery, we can see the development of this constant internal struggle. The speaker in “Daddy” is largely negative and anxious about her predicament. The rigid, and organized stanzas demonstrate the linear nature of the speaker’s thoughts. Furthermore, Plath develops the rhyme scheme with words like “do”, “shoe” (2), “Achoo” (3)”, and “you (4), which lends the poem structure in the way that these sounds repeat. Lines of “Daddy” contain repetition themselves: “You do not do, you do not do” (1), “Of wars, wars, wars” (18), “Ich, ich, ich, ich” (223). This rhythm and repetition in the first twelve stanzas collectively reveal the speaker’s inability to move beyond her childhood perception of a fat...

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