Sylvia Plath's "Daddy"

In Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” she starts off the poem in a slightly less ominous tone than she ends in. It took me roughly two or three times before I actually came to understand the undertones she created using large-scale metaphors such as Nazi Germany. I still do not know if I fully grasp the ideas she is trying to get across. I feel like she is speaking of how she constantly tried to live up to her father’s standards but finally after a long time, began to give up. At first, she uses less harsh terms to describe how she feels she needs to break free from the memory of her father, as it has had a huge effect on her life. This feeling of breaking from memory is evident in the line “Daddy, I have had to kill you.” In the fourth stanza, Plath begins to change the tone and starts describing her father in Nazi Germany terms. I may have interpreted this wrong, but I thought she was describing her father as one would describe a typical Aryan during World War II in the line “Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.” The poem also dives deeper when Plath mildly describes an attempted suicide in the line “At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you.” After she describes her attempted suicide, I believe she goes on describe how she married someone just like her father. She stated “And I said I do, I do” which is what led me to believe she is alluding to marriage. Also, when she talks about someone sucking her blood for seven years, I think she is referring to her husband. At the end, I feel as if Sylvia Plath tries to sum up all of her emotions before finally breaking free from all her pent up sadness and anger that she has for her father’s death. She probably built up all this anger and sadness because her father died at a time when she was still very young.

Vocabulary Words:

Luftwaffe- generic German term for air force—“ I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.”

Taroc- card game consisting of Tarot cards—“ With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack”

Chuffing- to produce noisy exhaust or exhalations—“ An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew.”