Use of Figurative Language in Daddy by Sylvia Plath

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The figurative language in the poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath can be used to discover a deeper significant of the poem. By using figurative language throughout the poem such as symbolism, imagery, and wordplay, Plath reveals hidden messages about her relationship with her father. Plath uses symbols of Nazis, vampires, size, and communication to help reveal a message about her dad.

In Plath’s poem she frequently uses figurative language about Nazis and the Holocaust. Plath depicts herself as a victim by saying she is like a Jew, and her father is like a Nazi. Plath uses a train engine as a metaphor for her father speaking the German Language, and also to depict herself as a victimized Jew being taken away to a concentration camp. Plath states “And the language obscene / An engine, and engine / Chuffing me off like a Jew” (Plath 30-32). This shows the subtle metaphor of the train engine being her father speaking the German language and how she feels she is a prisoner. Plath uses other subtle metaphor that connect her father discreetly to the Nazis when she uses German words such as “Luftwaffe” (42) which is the German air force, and “Panzer-man” (45) who were the men who manned the German tanks. Another example of Plath using figurative language to depict her father as a Nazi can be found when she uses an allusion to Hitler’s mustache and the blue eyes of Aryans. “And your neat moustache / And your Aryan eyes, bright blue” (Plath 43-44). The use of this allusion gives the father the image of Hitler himself and helps build the metaphor of her father as a Nazi. Towards the end of the poem Plath begins to be more blunt in depicting her dad as a Nazi. She uses the metaphor of her father not being like God, but rather lik...

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...voices just can’t worm through” (Plath 68-70) A metaphor compares the telephone to a plant, and the plant has been cut off at the root and therefor the communication has been cut off. The roots are almost a metaphorical telephone line growing on her father’s grave, but now they are cut off and no longer available for communication. We can see the struggle Plath is having in wanting so desperately to tell her father something but never having the chance to say it.

By analyzing Plath’s use of figurative language we can see a much deeper significance to her poem. We see how she depicted her father as a suffocating monster through figurative language. We also get deeper insight into the type of relationship, or rather lack of relationship between the two.

Works Cited

Plath, Sylvia. The Collected Poems. Ed. Ted Hughes. NewYork: Harper Perennial, 1972.

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