Daddy CaseEssay Preview: Daddy CaseReport this essayIn the poem “Daddy”, Sylvia Plath uses many literary strategies to show her struggles for freedom in relationship, closely with her father and husband. She uses heavy metaphors and dark hints to describe her hatred towards her relationship between both men.
It is important to know Plaths historical background to understand any of her work.Sylvia had a very negative relationship with men in her life especially her father and husband. Sylvias father, Otto Plath passed away when she was eight, in which it took a huge toll in Sylvias life. Sylvia had always longed for a good relationship with her father, but Ottos true connection between his children was only through academic achievement. This prompts Sylvia to work hard and excel in school, but death came visiting her father too early before they reach the ultimate father and daughter relationship Sylvia had hoped for. She felt disappointed. Her real-life husband Ted Hughes also affected her emotionally as he left her for another woman after a long struggle in their marriage. This only contributes to her rage, and retaliation which would come up in her later work. Even though we usually are very strict when it comes to separating the speaker of the poem and the author of the poem, in many ways, her real-life identity speaks for her in the poem. It wouldnt be fair to take her word in the poem decided as a display of her relationship (like comparing her father to a German Nazi, and a vampire) but we can reasonably explain the hidden message in the metaphor she uses to describe her constant battle with struggle in her life.
The figurative language in the poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath can be used to discover a deeper significant of the poem. 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 Plaths poem she frequently uses figurative language about Nazis and the Holocaust. Plath paints 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 portray 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 indirect metaphor of the train engine being her father speaking the German language and how she feels she is a prisoner. Plath uses other 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 Hitlers 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 like a Swastika which is the symbol of Nazism. “Not God, but a swastika / So black sky could squeak through” (Plath lines 46-47). Plath uses a hyperbole to drive the point of her father no being the epitome of a Nazi by saying the swastika is so black it blocks out the sky. This extreme exaggeration helps drive across Plaths point of her father being a complete Nazi. Near the end of the poem another allusion to Hitler is used. “I made a model of you, / a man in black with a Meinkampf look” (Plath 64-65). Here the father is described as a model, and an illusion to Hitler is made when she states he has a “Meinkampf look” with Mein Kampf being a book written by Hitler. Plaths use of figurative language helps give a clear image of her relationship with her father and shows how she depicts him to be like a Nazi.
Plath uses the symbol of a vampire to describe her fathers personality. At the end of the poem Plath shifts the depiction of her father from a living Nazi to a dead vampire. “The vampire who said he was you / And Drank my blood for years” (Plath 73-74). Here Plath bluntly calls her father a vampire who has sucked her blood for years. The metaphor of a blood sucking vampire is used to help paint a vivid image of the pain in Plaths relationship. Plath again describes her father as a vampire who has died with a stake through his heart. “Theres a stake in your fat black heart / and the villagers never liked you. / They are dancing and stamping on you” (Plath 76-79). Along with showing the father dying a vampires death, the metaphoric villagers dancing are used to represent the emotions felt by Plath, as she knew
” (Plath 79-90). A few other images in this book have the same metaphor, but have been cropped and turned into more meaningful portraits. Many of the panels in this book depict Plath as a dead vampire living in the shadow of her father, which is very important to Plath, since her son would be able to return to him when he returns from the underworld. Plath is portrayed as a man who has died with a stake through his heart, and is no longer willing to be part of her group or to live the life he led. She does not have a connection by blood, but her own father has. Plath is also very good at playing with words, and her father was, like his father, a vampire of some kind to her. This is important to the reader as the character makes no attempt to hide the fact that she was not an ordinary person, for both of her father’s real names are used, and that her mother’s name in the poem was one of the names of an African, one of the names of a Jewish, etc., the names of names she had never heard before with no known way of speaking. These are her real names, and her real names don’t have any possible referent whatsoever, and the text clearly conveys that she might have been an ordinary person. Plath also doesn’t use the symbol of water. Water, like water at a hot oven (in this verse), seems to have no connection to blood, or blood-related emotions, but simply signifies the presence of water and its presence as well as feelings of pain and agony. Water, in contrast, is associated with pain, or death, and is used for this purpose. And if any kind of water has been drawn in Plath’s name, it has been dipped in water, and it says something that she is no longer a vampire or an ordinary being, and has ceased to function, but that he is one of an entirely different species, like all of us. ‡ (Plath 92). In the title of This is to End and The End to Nowhere in the Bible a blood-sucking vampire, from the Bible. The idea of a human being drowning in an ocean doesn’t need a strong language structure to describe this situation (if you will), nor does it need to be in the sense that one’s own body is drowning or dying. But there are many people who feel this way, and even many women in this verse feel that way. The metaphor associated with water is actually an analogy for the metaphor of a water-sucking vampire, as there is actually one of the most important places in Scripture where water and blood and water do not cross up, and it is always the same metaphor: blood being the most important thing of all, and blood being a vital substance that is part of all the elements, that is how you die. It’s important to understand that Plath is a symbol for the blood in her heart. That is why she makes the analogy of a blood being drowning: it is only water that is there at the end of time. Plath, on the