Sylvia Plath said that Daddy, “Is spoken by a girl with an Electra complex. Her father died while she thought he was God.” Yet many people see similarities in this poem with Plath's life, there seems to be a bit of both Plath and the girl with an Electra complex within this poem. Even though, Plath may use her own experience she draws heavily on Freudian thought to show the speaker's state of mind. The whole conflict of the poem is her trying to get over her father, yet it almost feels like she is being focused to write this even though she does not want to, and there is a lot more to her emotions then meets the eye. Though on the surface it seems like the speaker is succeeding at trying to “kill” her dead father, the sounds and use of repetition …show more content…
The fact that she makes the listener the father, also plays into this idea of being stuck because it makes him appear to be alive. Though she is obviously aware that he is dead, talking to him makes me think she wants or needs him to be alive, at least in her mind and memory. Also, because “you” has the ou ending the word has that yearning quality that all the other words with that ending have as well. It seems deliberate on Plath's part to mainly address her father as “you”, because it keeps with this ou sound that she used repeatedly and helps build the desperate tone of the speaker. In the last stanza the word “you” is used 4 times, and 3 of these times are end …show more content…
Also with this line she talks about the people that hate him separate from herself, only addressing the group as they, which shows that she cannot bring herself to hate him. Though she uses “you” a lot through the poem and this stanza the one place she needs to use it, she does not. I think if she was actually where over her father she would say I’m through with you, yet because she just says “I’m through,” we are left to wonder through with what? It seems like she's more done with herself than with her
The opening line “I cannot let you die” (Line 1) represents how much the persona loves the reader and wants that she/he should not die. Immediately, the persona explains her love by saying “I block factual death” (Line 2). This shows that she doesn’t want you to die and she could block death with any fact. Again the second line ‘I’ is used to explain the persona’s love with ‘you’ that she can use any fact to block the death. The binary of “I” in the first two lines and use of ‘you’ before the last word “due” explains the relationship between ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘death’ in the second line. The binary use of ‘I’ in first two lines and closing them with rhyming words ‘die’ and ‘death’ create the punch line of the first stanza that no one wants his/her loved ones to die and they could try to block death using any fact they can. The link of first two lines in with line 7 and 8, that by blocking death she will “There fix you shining / In a place of sun” (Line 7, 8). The interesting link between the first two lines of Stanza 1 and last two lines reinforce the feelings of love and hate for death that everyone will block death to let their loved one shine like the
In this stanza there is a question asked to the question reveals that the girl is puzzled about the lord is after her. This suggests that she is aware that he has different motives, rather than love and romance. This also shows that she knows the compliment is false and just a way of seducing her into bed. The second stanza is where the great lord isn’t so “great” anymore. He lured and tricked her into going to his palace home.
Specifically, both the context of the poem and Plath’s life. In “Daddy” Plath displays what is called an Electra complex. The Electra complex is similar to the Oedipus complex where the daughter feels an unyielding sense of affection towards her father. In the book “The Norton Introduction to Literature” by Kelly J. Mays, it goes more into detail about the Electra complex where despite Electra having a “tyrannical” father, “Electra persists in loving her deeply flawed father long after he is dead” (1100). In order to translate this complex into her writing, Plath chose to compare her flawed father to a well-known tyrannical force. By using this comparison we get a sense of what her relationship with her father was like. The Electra complex is also apparent throughout the poem, where in the beginning we see how her younger self associated her father with this god-like figure and despite the obvious fear Plath had for him through the line “I have always been scared of you,” (41) she wanted to end her life in order to “get back” to him (59). Supporting the notion that Plath did have an Electra complex with her father at least throughout her childhood.
In American society, the common stereotype is that the father has the role of the dominant figure in the household. Sylvia Plath and Sharon Olds may come across as two seemingly different poets, however, they are really quite similar, especially in their driving forces behind their writing styles in poetry. The lives of Plath and Olds are both expressive of the realities of a father-dominated family, in which both of these poets lost their fathers at a young age. This is significant because both poets have faced a similar traumatic event that has had everlasting effects on their adult womanhood, which is reflected in their writings. For both these woman, their accesses to father-daughter relationships were denied based on life circumstances. Ironically, their fathers were their muses for writing and are what made them the women they are today.
On the second stanza, the woman was haunted by the voices of her child in her mind. She said that under the circumstance she is right now, she has no choice but to have a abortion. Then she express her feeling and felt sorry about what she had done. “And your lives from your unfinished reach, If I stole your births and your names, Your straight baby tears and your games” (Gwendolyn Brooks) she show remorse that she stolen her child life and her child would get to experience the first tear and games. So now her baby already going through death.
A Mad Girl’s Love Song In Sylvia Plath’s poem “A Mad Girl’s Love Song”, it is hard to determine whether the speaker is mad or going mad. Plath, along with all women in this time period, were defined by their relationship to a man. When a woman was abandoned by her beloved, it was Earth-shattering, as it still can be for many women today. Before the reader even gets into the poem itself, the speaker is already described as “mad” and this word has multiple connotations.
In Plath's "Daddy," written just before her death and published posthumously, the most readily accessible emotion is anger, and much of the poem is couched in autobiographical allusions. Plath's own father died of a gangrenous infection, caused by diabetes he refused to treat, when Plath was eight years old, and his death was "the crucial event of her childhood" (Baym 2743). Plath makes personal references to her father as a...
Sylvia Plaths poem, Sow, depicts a beast of mythic proportions through various images, comparisons, and specific word choices. By presenting the sow from both the point of view of its owner, neighbor, and of the speaker, Plath paints a vivid picture of farmyard decadence that the reader can relate to.
Sylvia Plath’s jarring poem ‘Daddy’, is not only the exploration of her bitter and tumultuous relationship with her father, husband and perhaps the male species in general but is also a strong expression of resentment against the oppression of women by men and the violence and tyranny men can and have been held accountable for. Within the piece, the speaker creates a figurative image of her father by using metaphors to describe her relationship with him: “Not God but a Swastika” , he is a “… brute” , even likening him to leader of the Nazi Party; Adolf Hitler: “A man in black with a Meinkampf look .” Overall, the text is a telling recount of her hatred towards her father and her husband of “Seven years” and the tolling affect it has had on
In the opening stanza, in lines one and two the speaker is saying that she was unable to stop for death and so he had to stop for her. In line 2, the speaker says “he kindly stopped for me,” by using the word “kindly” it shows that death is not cruel nor is he frightening, but rather a guide leading her ...
13th March, 2014 In the poem “Mirrors”, by Sylvia Plath, the speaker accentuates the importance of looks as an aging woman brawls with her inner and outward appearance. Employing an instance of self-refection, the speaker shifts to a lake and describes the discrepancies between inevitable old age and zealous youth. By means of sight and personification, shifts and metaphors, the orator initiates the change in appearance which relies on an individual’s decision to embrace and reject it. The author applies sight and personification to accentuate the mirror’s role.
... be casting stones, or holding a conversation. The speaker of the poem does not move on from this emotional torment, yet I do feel as if in his quest for closure he does resolve some of the tumultuous feelings he does have in regard to losing his love.
Overall, the imagery that Plath creates is framed by her diction and is used to convey her emotions toward all relationships and probably even her own marriage to Ted Hughes, who had rude, disorderly habits. Even the structure of the poem is strict in appearance as each stanza ends with a period and consists of exactly six lines. In addition, the persona of the poem is very detached and realistic, so much that it is hard to distinguish between her and Plath, herself. However, Plath insinuates that the woman actually wants love deep down, but finds the complexity and unpredictability of love to be frightening. As a result, she settles for solitude as a defense against her underlying fear.
The poetry of Sylvia Plath can be interpreted psychoanalytically. Sigmund Freud believed that the majority of all art was a controlled expression of the unconscious. However, this does not mean that the creation of art is effortless; on the contrary it requires a high degree of sophistication. Works of art like dreams have both a manifest content (what is on the surface) and latent content (the true meaning). Both dreams and art use symbolism and metaphor and thus need to be interpreted to understand the latent content. It is important to maintain that analyzing Plaths poetry is not the same as analyzing Plath; her works stand by themselves and create their own fictional world. In the poems Lady Lazarus, Daddy and Electra on Azalea Path the psychoanalytic motifs of sadomasochism, regression and oral fixation, reperesnet the desire to return to the incestuous love object.
Sylvia Plath has brought the attention of many Women’s studies supporters while being recognized as a great American poet. Most of her attention has come as a result of her tragic suicide at age thirty, but many of her poems reflect actual events throughout her life, transformed into psychoanalytical readings. One of Plath’s most renowned poems is “Daddy”. In this poem there are ideas about a woman’s relationship with men, a possible insight on aspects of Plath’s life, and possible influences from the theories of Sigmund Freud.