Daddy By Sylvia Plath Figurative Language

459 Words1 Page

Literature of the Americas
Mahanaz Naser
Response Paper # 2
10/7/2014

The Little Things That Matter

In Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” the speaker of the poem uses figurative language to create an image of her father in our minds. You can already tell by the way she describes her father, you know that she doesn’t have a good relationship with her father. For example when she states “Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time –” (Lines 6-7) it explains even though, her father is long dead, the speaker hasn’t been able to let go of her memories of him. The quote is significant because of the harsh/bitter vibe that the quote is giving off, it explains how the speaker is feeling.

As the story progresses we see the speaker’s tone getting darker, and she states “I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die, and get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.” (Lines 57-60). These lines show show desperate she was to get even with her father. She wanted to kill herself just so she can kill him “again”, to finally end her misery. Which shows the reader how terrible her life was with her father.

As the speaker continues telling the readers about her life with her father, she …show more content…

“A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.” (Lines 33-35). This made me realize, that she felt like a prey in her father eyes, she was always afraid of dying, just like the Jews who had their fate sealed when Hitler became their leader. Plath had stated in the beginning “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 breathe or Achoo.” (Lines 1-5), which shows how she’s a prisoner, she compares her father to a shoe in which she’s trapped in. She’s unable to break free from her father's grasp/hold on her life, until the day he dies, even then his memory continued to haunt

Show More
Related

  • Lee Little Father

    641 Words  | 2 Pages

    The speaker’s personal emotions emphasizes the poem’s theme since although his father is no longer with him in this world, the memory of his father will always live in his heart. Throughout the poem, Lee uses the sky, underground, and the heart to symbolize imagination, reality, and memory—emphasizing the poem’s theme of the remembrance of a loved one. Lee also uses repetition to convey the meaning of Little Father. The speaker repeatedly mentions “I buried my father…Since then…” This repetition displays the similarity in concepts, however the contrast in ideas. The first stanza focuses on the spiritual location of the speaker’s father, the second stanza focuses on the physical location of the father, and the third stanza focuses on the mental location of the speaker’s father. This allows the reader to understand and identify the shift in ideas between each stanza, and to connect these different ideas together—leading to the message of despite where the loved one is (spiritually or physically), they’ll always be in your heart. The usage of word choice also enables the reader to read in first person—the voice of the speaker. Reading in the voice of the speaker allows the reader to see in the perspective of the speaker and to connect with the speaker—understand

    Read More

  • Relationships In My Papa's Waltz And Daddy

    543 Words  | 2 Pages

    The overall general theme of both poems is about the author’s father. Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” and Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” may both reference their fathers, but their relationship and attitudes towards them differ immensely. “My Papa’s Waltz” features a theme of fear and love towards the father, while “Daddy” features hatred and loathing towards her father. Roethke uses imagery and diction that makes the reader feel different emotions. The imagery of a father with whiskey on his breath and battered knuckles paints a picture of a scruffy, rugged man.

    Read More

  • The Plath Celebration: A Partial Divided

    1862 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Sylvia Plath Comparison Analysis

    764 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop For Death

    727 Words  | 2 Pages

    When Death stops for the speaker, he reins a horse-drawn carriage as they ride to her grave. This carriage symbolizes a hearse of which carries her coffin to her grave a day or two after her death. As they ride, they pass, “the School… / the Fields of Gazing Grain— / [and] the Setting Sun—” (lines 9-12). These three symbolize the speakers life, from childhood in the playgrounds, to labor in the fields, and finally to the setting sun of her life. When the speaker and Death arrive at the house, it is night.

    Read More

  • The Stranger and The Moon And the Yew Tree

    1230 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... her poetry plays her off as neurotic at times. At an early age of losing her father and living from the period of post and pre world war 2, Plath related herself to those who suffered. On various occasions, Plath relates herself to the treatment of Jews. She sympathizes, depicting her pain relating to others, although still is unable to grasp or fully relate because of her state of mind. She as well weaves in feminist ideas when her marriage collapses, subliminally boosting her ego. Both Camu and Plath throughout their text creates a form of pattern of being able to recognize the inevitable on situations. Plath though makes attempts to create meaning to everyday situations because she, just like Meursualt obtained some ambition that quickly faded when reality of an uncaring, senseless world paints both as irrational and a threat to societal expectations.

    Read More

  • Comparing Feminist Poetry by Plath and Sexton

    1203 Words  | 3 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Little Fugue and Morning Song by Sylvia Plath

    1480 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the poem, Plath contradicts herself, saying, ‘I was seven, I knew nothing’ yet she constantly talks of the past, remembering. Her tone is very dark and imposing, she uses many images of blindness, deafness and a severe lack of communication, ‘So the deaf and dumb/signal the blind, and are ignored’. Her use of enjambment shows her feelings and pain in some places, in other places it covers up her emotional state. She talks of her father being a German, a Nazi. Whilst her father may have originated from Germany, he was in no way a Nazi, or a fascist. He was a simple man who made sausages. ‘Lopping the sausages!’ However she used this against her father, who died when she was but eight, saying that she still had night mares, ‘They color1 my sleep,’ she also brings her father’s supposed Nazism up again, ‘Red, mottled, like cut necks./There was a silence!’. Plath also talks of her father being somewhat of a general in the militia, ‘A yew hedge of orders,’ also with this image she brings back her supposed vulnerability as a child, talking as if her father was going to send her away, ‘I am guilty of nothing.’ For all her claims of being vul...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Poem Daddy

    949 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Daddy

    834 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the poem, “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath shows her character to have a love for her father as well as an obvious sense of resentment and anger towards him. She sets the tone through the structure of the poem along with her use of certain diction, imagery, and metaphors/similes. The author, Sylvia Plath, chooses words that demonstrate the characters hatred and bitterness towards the oppression she is living with under the control of her father and later, her husband. Plath’s word choice includes many words that a child might use. There is also an integration of German words which help set the tone as well. She creates imagery through her use of metaphors and similes which allow the reader to connect certain ideas and convey the dark, depressing tone of the poem.

    Read More

  • Misonogy In Sylvia Plath's Daddy

    1201 Words  | 3 Pages

    Daddy was written on October 12, 1962 by Sylvia Plath, shortly before her death, and published posthumously in Ariel in 1963. Throughout the poem it could be viewed from a feminist perspective, drawing attention to the misogynistic opinions and behaviours of the time it was written. Misonogy is a person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women. It can be manifested in numerous ways, including sexual discrimination, denigration of women, violence against women, and sexual objectification of women. Plath uses the reversal of gender stereotypes/roles within Daddy, which could be interpreted as an attempt to empower women.

    Read More

  • The Colossus Poem Analysis

    597 Words  | 2 Pages

    Not only did Plath already lack a relationship with her father, the death of her father climaxed the situation. When her father died when she was eight, all her hopes and dream of engaging in a meaningful relationship with her father w...

    Read More

  • Freedom from Male Oppression in Sylvia Plath's Daddy

    1202 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sylvia Plath?s poem "Daddy" describes her feelings of oppression from her childhood and conjures the struggle many women face in a male-dominated society. The conflict of this poem is male authority versus the right of a female to control her own life and be free of male domination. Plath?s conflicts begin with her father and continue into the relationship between her and her husband. This conflict is examined in lines 71-80 of "Daddy" in which Plath compares the damage her father caused to that of her husband.

    Read More

  • Psychoanalytically Analyzing the Poetry of Sylvia Plath

    1843 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • A Women's Relationship With Men in The Poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath

    1014 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about Daddy By Sylvia Plath Figurative Language

Open Document