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After doing some research on the poet Sylvia Plath it soon became apparent that this poem Daddy is somewhat of a confessional life story. Throughout the poem Plath incorporates many different elements to reveal the theme of her negative attitude towards men in her life especially that of her father. In lines 2 - 3 Any more black shoe, In which I have lived like a foot. Plath uses the image of feet and black shoes to begin to reveal the picture of her relationship with her father. The feet here represent that of herself, she in this case is the foot while her father is the shoe, a shoe which she is surrounded by and cant escape.
The color black is used here to also represent another portion of the picture of the relationship she has with her father revealing that black is symbolic of death and that since the shoe that is binding her is black, in essence is killing her. In lines 8 - 10 Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe, Bug as a Frisco seal. Plath is portraying her father as a statue one made up of marble. Marble is cold and hard and when in the form of a statue, which is a replica of the person, which is life-less, again, an image of death. The statue is something that you can talk to but your words will never penetrate, she feels like she is talking to her father that way and that she will never get any kind of reaction out of him. There is a communication barrier that Plath illustrates using another symbol in lines 22 - 26 So I could never tell where you put your foot, your root.
I could never talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. These lines are relatively important in revealing another aspect of her relationship with her father, she is saying that there is no way that she was able to even utter a sound around him out of fear. Since Nazis are German and she is portraying herself as a Jew, the way she describes the German language is the way she feels towards her father.
And the language obscene, An engine, An engine, Chuffing me off like a Jew. Going along with the Nazi/Jew theme that Plath incorporates into her poem also gives more of an insite to her hatred towards her father. Since Hitler was the leader of the Nazis and he wanted to have world domination and his number one enemy was the Jewish people, Plath portrays herself as Hitler, her fathers, archrival, a Jew. In lines 56 - 57 A stake in your fat black heart and drank my blood for a year, the vampire that said he was you and the line Ive killed one man, Ive killed two. While writing these images of her father she sees him as someone that will only cause harm to her and scare her. When she says she has killed two men it is because of the fact that she married a man that is as controlling and possessive as her father.
She had to end the relationship to free her by using the term kill. Sucking the life out of her he was, she not living for herself, but out of fear of him. In lines 61 - 62 But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue, by doing some research on the life of Plath, this image is one in which holds truth. She speaks about her suicide attempt and glued back together means that they hospitalized her and she was rehabilitated.
When referring to glue, although it was her father that broke her, the cracks, and scars are still visible to her and to others. Towards the end of the poem the girl who is struggling with her relationship with her father finally puts it to rest. Line 80 Daddy, daddy, you bastard, Im through Plath is revealing that she is finally letting all the hurt go to rest. The image that the poem revealed is that the daughter is standing there by her fathers grave telling him that he got what he deserves and now he can no longer harm her. She is done harboring these feelings of that have tortured her for her entire life. They are now six feet under with her father.
Plath uses many different elements through out her poem Daddy to give the reader a strong, vivid picture of what her life was like when it came to her relationships with men. They were all unsuccessful and through out her struggle her entire life she has finally found the courage to let all that go and go on with her life without those cutting feelings inside her.
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Research essay sample on Poem Daddy Ive Killed
