Breaking Down "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath

Cassandra McCulley

Dr. Sharon Oster

March 25, 2012

Breaking Down “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath

            After reading Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Daddy” for the first time, I really didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t sure if the narrator was Sylvia herself, I wasn’t sure if the father being described was indeed a Nazi, and I had very little knowledge about Sylvia Plath’s background to begin with.

            Throughout the entire poem Plath, the narrator, describes things that she has been feeling her entire life. We know this because on line three she clearly states, “For thirty years…” (3). So now that she is grown and writing this poem, we realize she is reflecting on her childhood. Her style of writing seems almost childish, somewhat similar to the old nursery rhyme, “There was an old woman that lived in a shoe…” This connection suggests to me, as a reader, that she is unable to let go of her past. She also uses other childish words and language such as the word “daddy”, also showing that she is unable to let go of the things that happened to her as a child.

            We later realize that her father died when she was quite young. Plath writes, “Daddy, I have had to kill you./ You died before I had time—,” (6-7). When I read this line I had to think it over a few times. By saying that she had to kill her father, I translated that to she had to forget him, she had to kill her memories of him. When she said he died before she had time, I wonder what she meant. What wasn’t she able to do before he died? This is answered later in the poem.

            Continuing on in the poem, we realize that communication was a big problem for Plath. In lines 24 through 30 she writes, “I never could talk to you./ The tongue stuck in my jaw./ It stuck in a barb wire snare./ Ich, ich, ich, ich,/ I cold hardly speak./ I though every German was you./ And the language obscene.” (24-30). Here we begin to realize that Plath was unable to communicate with her father. She was so scared that she could hardly speak. We also begin to see Plath’s references to the Holocaust. She continues to compare her father to a Nazi, and herself to a Jew. She was a prisoner, helpless, unwanted, a weak oppressed victim of her father.

            Then Plath began to talk about her own brushes with death. “I was ten when they buried you./ At twenty I tried to die/ And get back, back, back to you.” (57-60). She is describing her own three attempts at suicide here in such a unique way. I didn’t know she had attempted to suicide, although I did know she eventually succeeded in doing so. This was an interesting way of sneakily incorporating her death experiences.

            Plath’s writing continued to stump me. “And I said I do, I do./ So daddy, I’m finally through./ The black telephone’s off at the root,/ The voices just can’t worm through. If I’ve killed one man I’ve killed two--/ The vampire who said he was you/ And drank my blood for a year,/ Seven years, if you want to know.” (67-74). It took me quite some time to realize that she indeed married a man just like her father, who like a vampire, sucked the life out of her. But like her father, she left her husband, and is trying to get rid of all memory of him. I love the way Plath wrote about her husband in this poem. I love the parallels she creates between her husband and her father, and how hard she is trying to convey the message that she wants to be free of them and the memory of them.

            Although the poem clearly says that Plath is through, she never can be truly through because this poem will live on forever since the moment she put it down on paper. I understand why Plath received so much criticism from people during the time period the poem was written because World War II and the Holocaust were fresh subjects and she was deemed somewhat disrespectful because she compared her father and childhood to the Holocaust. But I think it really was beautiful writing. She was trying to connect to people, and make the poem so dramatic in the sense that people would be able to understand and somewhat relate. Although it seems controversial, I think this is an overall beautiful piece and is very intricately written.