The poem ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath is an emotional and complex message aired by the poet to her late father and her husband. It brings out many themes, including hurt, anger, and oppression of women by their male counterparts. The poem is written from a woman’s perspective, whereby she is addressing the oppressive memory of her father and her struggle to set herself free from the memory. The speaker begins by addressing the harsh conditions that she went through, which are no longer necessary. Then, she addresses her father, claiming that she had to kill him, although she never had a chance to finish him. According to the poet, her father is a huge obstacle in her life as she describes him as ‘Marble-heavy.’
Her struggle is also demonstrated through how she seemingly struggled to communicate the German language to pray for her father to return. She claims that the language is like ‘the engine of a train’ transporting her to a concentration camp like a Jew. The poet expresses her terror and pain through the poem by using words such as a Nazi, a fascist, and a vampire to describe her father. More so, she is seen as a victim trapped in the big black shoe and the ‘train,’ thus showing women’s struggles.
The main themes demonstrated in the poem are love, hatred, oppression, and loss. The narrator sounds like a tormented soul who never enjoyed the love of her father before he died. The relationship with the father represents violence and oppression in that she spends most of her life trying to break free from what she feels as tight hold. Consequently, the theme of male dominance in real life is reflected as the author shows how men hold the most political and social positions and the moral authority over women. The poet feels that such powers aim to oppress women, and they deprive them of the power of self-expression and freedom. In the poem, she states, ‘It stuck in a barbed wire snare…I could hardly speak.’ The word ‘Daddy’ shows patriarchy in the society whereby the author is an adult woman referring to her father using a childish choice of words, which implies either fear or respect. For instance, fear is clearly demonstrated in the line, ‘I have always been scared of you.’
Furthermore, oppression is brought out when she compares herself to a foot living inside a black shoe, which could probably mean that she is living in darkness from the shield of her father’s shadow. Thus, she wishes that she could bring him back to life and revenge by killing him. She describes her life as torturous since she underwent misery and pain. At some point, she identified herself as a Jew, which means that the torture had stolen her identity. Oppression is further explained through her husband, who she describes as a vampire at the end of the poem. Finally, the theme of loss comes out at the end, where she gives up and stops following her father’s shadow. The last line of the poem sounds that a giving-up note after the poet loses the battle of trying to win her father back. She wrote, ‘Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through,’ to express defeat and loss. The theme of love is brought out through the compassion the poet had towards her father, which makes her miss him after his death. Also, she claims that she married a man who resembled the father to maintain his memory. However, the husband turned out to be a vampire just like ‘Daddy.’ Furthermore, she attempted to commit suicide to join her father in the grave because she loved him and really missed him, and death was the only option for her to be together again. She writes, ‘…At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.’
Consequently, the theme of life and death brings itself out. The poet realized that life was important after she was rescued and made stronger. As she puts it, ‘…and they stuck me together with glue,’ meaning that she was now stronger to face life. Also, she finally accepted that her father is dead, and she is willing to let her go at the end of the poem, without regrets when she says, ‘Daddy, you can lie back now.’
The poem utilizes various literary devices such as metaphors, assonance, similes, and sound devices to bring out the message. For instance, ‘the black shoe’ is used to represent the poet’s father’s image, in which the poet was trapped inside for over thirty years. Also, Vampire is a metaphor that compares her father to a dangerous creature or memory that kept on haunting her. Besides, referring to her husband as a vampire who wasted her seven years resembles the difficulties experienced in marriages under the patriarchal beliefs. Assonance is evident in the poem through the continued repetition of vowel sounds in the same lines inside the stanzas. The author uses this style in most lines, for example, when she writes, ‘put your foot, your ro. For there is a repetition of sound ‘o’ in the line. Another instance of assonance is the line, ‘…the clear beer of Vienna, ‘ which repeats the sound ‘e’ to create a repetitive sound.
Another style used throughout the poem is personification, where the poet relates her father to inanimate objects. First, she compares him to a black shoe, where she is trying to fit herself. Also, she compares him to a German train taking her to a concentration camp. She says, ‘an engine, an engine chuffing me off like a Jew.’ Imagery is brought out where the poet describes her father so vivid that the reader gets a picture of how her daddy looked exactly. For instance, ‘A cleft in your chin instead of your foot…but no less a devil for that…’ creates imagination in the readers’ mind of the features of the man described in the poem. Also, ‘And your Aryan eye, bright blue…’ makes the reader perceive the looks.
Besides, the poet brings out her themes through the use of irony and satire. For instance, she is not happy about her seven-year marriage because she feels that her time was wasted. However, she claims that all women appreciate bullies and dictatorship in their relationships. In the line, ‘Every woman adores a fascist, the boot in the face, the brute brute heart of a brute like you,’ the poet expresses her anger towards the oppression of women by violent men through the use of a satirical comment.
Besides, there is the use of onomatopoeia, which refers to the imitation of the sound. The author, throughout the poem, records different sounds. For instance, she says, ‘It stuck in the barbed wire. Ich, ich, ich…’ to imitate the sound made by a person experiencing pain. Alliteration is another device used continuously in the poem. For example, the repetition of the sound, ‘m’ in the line, ‘I made a model of you,’ and the sound of letter ‘h’ in the phrase, ‘…I have had to kill you.’ Another style is repetition, which is evident in almost all stanzas to insist on the poet’s message. For instance, she keeps repeating the phrase, ‘I do, I do…’