Breaking Up With Daddy: Sylvia Plath on Human Relations

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As is inherent within the tradition of confessional poetry, a subgenre of lyric poetry which was most prominent from the fifties to the seventies (Moore), Sylvia Plath uses the events of her own tragic life as the basis of creating a persona in order to examine unusual relationships. An excellent example of this technique is Plath’s poem “Daddy” from 1962, in which she skilfully manipulates both diction, trope and, of course, rhetoric to create a character which, although separate from Plath herself, draws on aspects of her life to illustrate and make points about destructive, interhuman relations. Firstly that of a father and daughter, but later also that of a wife and her unfaithful husband. Like her fellow confessionals such as Anne Sexton and W.D. Snodgrass (Moore), Plath uses plain, uncomplicated diction; meaning that she creates a linguistic world for her poem that every (young) adult reader should be able to access without too much trouble. She does expect some level of basic historical knowledge from her reader through her repeated references to World War II, in lines like these: Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. (33-34) As well as these: I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look (64-65) It is important to understand, however, that Plath’s poem is not simply about the perils of the war, and the hate-filled relations between Jews and Nazis, but rather about the troubled thoughts of a character who lost her father at a young age, and after having struggled with a desire to be reunited for many years, has now finally had enough of her own obsession and is “breaking up” with him in the final line: Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I’m through. (80) Although Plath’s ... ... middle of paper ... ...nse of the ambivalent, yet prevailingly negative, feelings the speaker has towards her father via the image of bright blue eyes, something usually associated with intellect and kindness, as well as the idea of Aryanism, which is obviously reminiscent of World War II and brutality. And so, through carefully examining Plath’s work we more clearly understand a different kind of male/female, or more precisely, father/daughter relationship than what we usually think of— one in which the daughter is deeply tormented by the memory of a strict father, as well as a longing for his unattainable recognition and affection. Works Cited Plath, Sylvia. “Daddy.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. Shorter 11th ed. New York: Norton, 2013. 1049-51. Print. Moore, Jennifer. "Confessional Poetry." Ohio Northern University. Ada, OH. 9 April 2014.

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