Araina
DE, USA
Tuesday, October 1, 2002

Liz Hood
London, UK
Thursday, August 1, 2002

"There are a dozen or two" refers to the town where the father came from, it had a common name and the phrase comes after "My Polack friend Says", which makes this clear, I think.

I don't know where you get the thought her father was good - representing the good in people, I guess you made it up, it is not clear from the poem and the lines speak against that interpretation.

Anja Beckmann
Leipzig, Germany
Tuesday, July 16, 2002

Since I have a Lit. final tomorrow morning (it's 2:35 a.m. now), I must be brief in expressing my disappointment at discovering that most of the critics seem egregiously off base. However, considering poetry's subjective nature, I will not worry too much about my disagreements. Mainly, I am abhorred to discover that most readers interpret Plath's conception of her father in the least positive light. It seems to me like she really hated the "bastard." He died as a result of not caring for his diabetes and she blamed him for deserting her at a young age. Furthermore, the importance of her soured relationship with Ted Hughes and the merging of this husband-character with that of her father is not adequately elaborated. Seven years refers to the time after he left her in the north UK. Listed explanations for such details as the black shoe and the rack and screw are laudable. The black shoe seems to be a metaphor to how her life is trapped in sorrow like a foot is ! trapped in a shoe. And, the rack and the screw refer to a medieval torture device. The association with Jewish persecution in this poem can be better understood by concomitant study of Lady Lazarus. Really, I could keep going for quite a while, but that would bring too much sorrow to my heart and take too much of my diminishing allotment of sleeping time.

Patrick K
Mississippi State Univ., USA
Thursday, May 2, 2002

I ask you not to condemn me for what I write, everyone has their own opinion and interpretations of things, this is mine. I apoligize for how long it is.I am going to look at this poem one stanza at a time, because it seems easier for me to show exactly where I am getting my interpretation.

1st. I feel the black shoe is her mind, her repressed feelings, and in the first stanza she is saying that she is sick of hiding them, and trying to ignore them. She is scared of how she will react to them. I think Plath had anxiety problems, because in her poems often it seems she is relating to issues she tried to ignore, I have anxiety problems, and often I ignore my feelings and problems, and try to forget about them, because I dont like the way I react, I am afraid I will have a panic attack. I think Plath may have been the same way, I think she used writing as an outlet to calm herself down, and pour her emotions into. Writing is after all one of the best ways to deal with ones issues. I feel this is expressed in the last line barely daring to breathe or achoo she was barely daring to think or deal with it or she would collapse mentally into severe depression.

2nd. She talks about how her father died, I think when she says she has had to kill him, she means that she had to try to forget her memories of him, because most of them were good, and it only leaves her sadden. You died before I had time leaves it to he died before she had any reason to hate him or be angry with him, or realize that he wasnt the perfect, good, honest person she made him out to be.
3rd. Im not positive exactly on how to interpret. I feel the freakish Atlantic may have to do with sleep, and death. This stanza has to do with how she attempted suicide before. She is saying in a way she was trying to get back to him, get back to the good. In this poem she often uses her father as a metaphor for good, the good in people, the good in life.

4th. She refers to the German language, which her father probably often spoke, the first line is referring to her fathers voice, what she knew of him, good things. Since there wasnt much she remembered about him, so she could often see him in others, which is where the common comes in.

5th. There are a dozen or two there are a dozen people that have reminded her of her father, that she thought were good and honest people, but mainly two, her father and her husband, the only person that she really felt was a good honest trustworthy person, the only one who hadnt hurt her. It is said that women tend to marry men that remind them of their father. She could never tell if they really were good like her father was.

6th. She says, I thought every German was you She kept thinking this person is good, like her father. She never thought they were going to hurt her, because she did not see the bad in them.

7th. She refers to how the Jews were sent to concentration camps in WW2, which reminds her of how she went from person to person she thought was good (like her father) She was looking for someone to idolize, to trust, to look up to, as she did her father, but she kept being disappointed by people.

8th. The snows of Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna this is how no one measured up, no one was completely trustworthy in her mind. She thought the person was trustworthy like her father but they werent, thus are not very pure or true I think how she keeps comparing herself to a Jew, she is seeing how she is good in ways, and bad in others, and maybe she brought on the bad things that happened to her, maybe she caused people to disappoint her.

9th. She is saying how highly she held her father, how she put him on this pedestal in her mind, and no one could measure up. She is realizing that he wasnt everything that she thought he was, he wasnt as perfect as she wanted him to be, just like everyone else. She is also comparing her father to her husband in this, the one person she completely trusted.

10th. Not God but a swastika the image she had of her father being God, and her husband, and untrustworthy people being swastika. And since her husband was, maybe her father was too, maybe everyone was the same, no one was completely trustworthy, everyne would disappoint her. The second line refers to how her mind was so set on the thought that there is someone out there who wont hurt me, who is good like my father was, that reality couldnt squeek through The second line I think may have to do with how women tend to marry men like their father, and since she thought her husband was like her father (good), and wasnt, it would also make her father a fascist or brute, thus everyone would be.
11th. Shes talking about her mental image of her father, how innocent she held him, and thus her husband as well. A cleft in your chin instead of your foot her perfect image instead of reality. She associates the word with foot quite often in this poem. But no less a devil for that, no not shes saying her father was like her husband and everyone else because he seemed so innocent, but she doesnt know for sure if he was or not. The black man is her husband, is bad, at the time she wrote this she obviously was very depressed, and thought very little of her husband.

12th. Shes saying how her husband broke her heart, and her spirit. She was ten when she first repressed her feelings about her father, and started the idea that there was someone out there who wouldnt hurt her, that people could be pure. At 20 she tried to die, to be with her father, since she couldnt find a trustworthy person. Her father at times also seems to be referred to as God, since he is suppose to be pure.

13th. They revived her, and made her supposedly better and left her, didnt make sure she was. She decided she would find someone like her father, someone to look up to, someone to hold on that pedestal, someone who was good. She thought she had found that person in her husband, who was in reality black Black often to her means bad, evil.

14th. Her husband seemed to love her, for who she was, her good and bad parts, the rack and screw. So she decided he was the one. She says in the last line, since he wasnt, shes through, shes done with it, with life. All she sees now in people is the bad the black telephone and the good cant get through. So now she has reversed what she sees in people, instead of seeing the good in people, all she sees now is bad, so she feels alone, and isolated.

15th. If Ive killed one man, Ive killed two Shes destroyed the image of her father, and a good person, shes destroyed the ability to see good in anyone. Her husband is the vampire, 7 years she thought he was good. Daddy, you can lie back now the thought that there are good people is gone now.

16th.Shes killed the ability to see good in anyone. Her mind (the villagers) always knew that there isnt a perfect person, a true, honest person. So now her mind is attacking the image of her father, because of what her husband did to her, and how he forced her to think that everyone is bad. Her mind always knew her husband was going to hurt her, the way her father did when he died. In the last line she is addressing both her father and her husband, both the good in people, and the bad, she has searched for, thus the word daddy twice. Shes saying again, shes done with everything, with everyone, with life.

The poem is about how she has come to realize that no one is perfect, and everyone was going to end up hurting her, and she didnt want to deal with the pain anymore, so she decided she was going to end it. The poem isnt really about her relationship with her father, he is more of just a metaphor for good, because that was what he was to her.

Erica
Lindstrom, USA
Friday, March 8, 2002

To fully comprehend the poem, Daddy, one must distance oneself enough to realize that Sylvia Plath is not the speaker in the poem. Though she was German, she was not part Jewish nor was her father a nazi. Plath is merely speaking through the narrator. Rather than right a poem about her strained relationship with her father and then with her husband, Plath disguises her story with that of a troubled young girl grown up to relive her father-daughter relationship with her husband.

A freudian analysis would say that the speaker was suffering from the Electra Complex. She saw her father as something of an idol and worshipped him to the point of wanting him sexually. Knowing this was wrong, she was trying to distance herself from him but was stopped by his death. Her guilt drove her to attempting suicide at age twenty before she could divorce her husband.

For Plath, the poem provided closure to the relationships with her husband and father.

Jamie Lynn Choina
New Orleans, LA, USA
Friday, February 22, 2002

I believe that Daddy is another one of Sylvia Plath's beautifully crafted poems, expressing her emotions to the greatest extent. When her father passed away at an early age, Plath bottled her feelings inside and vowed from then on never to speak to God again. 'Daddy', the title of the peom indirectly represents her father and God who in general is a father figure. She expresses her rage towards both in the poem, her father for deserting her and God for letting her down by allowing her father die. The poem is also conveys Sylvia Plath's anger towards her husband Ted Hughs in that he left her and in doing that, deprived their children of a permanent father.

Vicki Kabalika
Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania
Tuesday, February 19, 2002

I think the extensive posts here pretty much covered all the major themes in Daddy but I still have a couple of questions....

Leaving SP's own history behind. (thats legal you know)

1. Anyone else see sexual implications in the poem? "rack and screw" Double entendre perhaps? There are others I think. 2. What do you think about the repeated rhyme of "ooo?" Any musical implications? If anyone knows anything about music theory is the "ooo" a minor note. Elegy. Am I stretching?

Anyhow I agree that this poem is amazing in dealing with the frustrations of communication and the tools we use to communicate. I understand the odd anger that complete miscommunication can lead to. Growing up as a first generation American kid has had it's bumpy moments for me and my parental units, and I have had my share of hatemyparents binges. Sadly, my friends that speak the same language also share in these same frustrations. Daddy is universal in its understanding of the complexities of Parent/child relationships.

I look at the background of this page and I just want to say...SMILE DAMNIT!NIT!

Michael Choung
San Pedro, USA
Wednesday, November 28, 2001

There is an intense level of self interest here, to the extent that this poem has been criticised for its (self-indulgence?) via the allegory of the holocaust.

I disagree. "Daddy" succeeds because of Plath's conviction; her belief that her father is both the end and the beginning of her existence.

It is unmistakingly Plath in its chill, almost brazen belief and strident rhyme and rythmn. Although the hatred and vehemance is confronting, it is never excessive and is executed with that simmering, resentful voice that Plath used so often.

"Daddy" is calculated, but is made that much better because Plath allows it to be visceral without being strained.

Cameron Pegg
Brisbane, Australia
Wednesday, November 28, 2001

I find it bewildering, reading some of the above comments, that so much criticism has been levelled at Plath. We've been presented with the argument that using Holocaust imagery with which to express personal turmoil and grief, is 'inappropriate' and 'selfish.'

Surely we should remember the circumstances in which the poem was penned? I feel that Plath can be forgiven what some might see as bitter hyperbole; the speaker in 'Daddy' is clearly unbalanced, and struggling to reconcile herself to loss, grief, anger and loneliness. This was a woman trying to bring up two children alone, who arguably, could not cope with her husband, Ted Hughes's, affair with Assia Wevill. The loss of an unfaithful husband is paralleled with the loss of her father, her grief is perhaps the 'black shoe' that she has found herself trapped inside. There is palpable anger towards her father and her husband, both of whom she addresses as 'Daddy.'

Yes, the speaker may appear childlike and fantastical, but coupled with the voice of a confused child, is the voice of a perceptive adult. I've always felt that in 'Daddy,' Plath speaks as a woman who knows that she can longer cope, and is strangely calm about being "through." She skilfully binds together childhood, and what is for her, the end of life. Plath feels that she has come full circle; the loss of her father, her later attempt at suicide, "At twenty I tried to die... to get back, back, back to you," is now mirrored in the loss of her husband to Wevill, and Plath's impending suicide.

Surely it's not surprising that in this fragile emotional state, the delineation of father and lover, black and white, good and evil, would become extremely blurred. Maybe loss itself is the 'black man' who haunts her.

The use of colour is extremely evocative in 'Daddy.' Plath's depression, her all encompassing blackness, is clearly expressed, a white "foot" inside a "black shoe." Another example is her confusion regarding good and evil, saviour and damnation, "Not God but a swastika... So black no sky could squeak through."

Considering Plath's situation, her depression and grief, I feel that her choice of imagery is not only justified, but thoroughly appropriate. Perhaps in the final analysis, 'Daddy' is addressed to Hughes, the 'fascist,' 'vampire' and 'brute heart' whom she loves and hates herself for loving.

Isla Kennedy
Belfast, N. Ireland
Monday, October 15, 2001

Angela Tallarida
Mornington, Australia
Thursday, September 20, 2001

I think that Plath is a great poet and 'Daddy' is evidence that she is. Some may choose to accentuate what seems to be the 'negative' aspect/s of this poem but I choose to accentuate the postive. The beauty of her poetry, including 'Daddy', lies not only in her experession but the poems strong connection with the struggle with life. Plath's use of Holocaust imagery has well been debated on, and I don't think that Plath intended for this poem to be taken literally as she, to A. Alvarez, referred to this poem as 'a bit of light verse'.

Plath is not insensitive to her use of such a horrific historic event. It's excusable due to art. She doesn't ridicule the Jews, but uses the experience as a whole only to make her feelings understandable to others. It is only due to such a metaphor that others may be able to understand that she felt much pain. A pain that no one can feel, but only speculate on. That is why a metaphor, such as the Holocaust references, has attracted a lot of controversy. People tend to ask themselves, 'Does any writer, does any human being other than an actual survivor, have the right to put on this death rig?'

I believe that no measure can be placed on human emotion and that is why the use of this metaphor is excusable. Regardless of the experiences and how others may view it, it is solely the impact on the individual that counts in art. Art brings people together to share an experience. This experience is unique and individual, but nonetheless has the same foundation of emotions, in this case; pain. Her poem is an art that builds a bridge letting people know that they are not alone.

Readers should have an open mind while reading Plath's poetry. In doing so they enter her world, one that falls apart, crumbles, the centre is not being held together. The emotions portrayed within this poem are so raw, yet so tenacious, so enduring. Beautiful.

Diane E Santos
Melbourne, Australia
Tuesday, August 21, 2001

"Daddy" is a confessional piece written by Plath three months before her death. In this poem Plath puts to rest her harboured animosity and resentment towards her father. These feelings have haunted Plath throughout her life after the death of her father when she was only ten.

Through the use of exaggerated Holocaust imagery Plath compares her father to a German Nazi, who has taken over her world. Plath harbours feelings of resentment towards her father for leaving her when she was so young. The fifth stanza outlines the little that Plath knew about her father as a result of his death.

My Polack friend
Says there is a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.

It is quite obvious that Plath longed to be able to share her father's company and learn all about who he was. The ninth stanza describes how Plath's father has taken over her life, he was her obsession, something she could never discard.

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through

I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you.

These two stanzas retell the story of her life. Her father died, at twenty she tried to commit suicide by over dosing on sleeping pills and 'they', her doctors stuck her together again. But they only used glue, would Plath be able to hold it together? And then Plath knew what to do she found someone who was exactly like her father someone to fill in the gaps.... Ted Hughes!! Plath says that she is finally through she has pulled the cord of the telephone so she won't have to hear the voices. She has killed one man she can kill two. This is her reference to her separation from Hughes. She claims he had sucked her life dry and so too was her father's memory. But does Plath finally cut herself off from her father or was her suicide her way of getting back to him??

Mary Attard
Melbourne, Australia
Thursday, August 16, 2001

Many believe that yes, she was a victim of circumstance because of the particular type of men that she attracted/came in contact with, and of course, the early death of her father. Some believe that the lack of male influence is what led her to hold a "grudge" against any male she happened to come into contact with. Obviously, her views regarding men were very different from those of the women around her, which could possibly be due to the events in her life that led her to possess negative connotations towards men.

However, some believe that Plath's opposition and general hatred towards men comes not from circumstance, but rather male dominance. The popular opinion on this side of the spectrum is that Plath was able to see clearly the reality of male dominance in the society that she lived in and was one of the few women calling out against it.

The question remains: did Plath's derogatory experiences with men cloud her visions and insight on male dominance in the world she lived in? Maybe. Regardless of whether or not Plath's views on the roles of men in that time were acurate, she certainly had past experiences that could have marred any credibility she might have once given the male race.

Jordanne Fletcher
USA
Tuesday, June 19, 2001

Stewart Clarke brought up the actual sound of this poem, comparing it to "The Bed Book". The impression that I got, and I've heard this before as well, is that the poem sounds like a locomotive engine, getting faster and more intense verse by verse, bringing our narrator to her concentration camp...the camp, to me, being life without daddy. Her father's death being something so sudden and unwanted as to be on par with being thrown on a train and sent to starve and die in a foreign place.

I also think that any feminist views interpreted in Daddy are fabricated by the reader. The narrator is a victim, yes, but not of male domination...rather, she is a victim of circumstance. And her way of dealing with this is to blame it all on her "abandonment" from Daddy.

Is this rational? Of course not. And I think that's what this poem is all about. The narrator is still a child...she was unable to ever truly grow up ("Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time--"), to break that emotional bond with her father. Electra complex, if you will. Daddy's untimely death spoiled the scheme of things, and the narrator finally comes to terms with herself and escapes the "black shoe" of this bond by focusing her negativities on the mythical "bag full of God" that is daddy.

This is the first poem I have ever appreciated and, therefore, the first poem I have ever attempted to analyze. Feedback is both welcomed and encouraged.

RedEye
Las Vegas, NV, USA
Friday, May 4, 2001

Louise
London, UK
Monday, April 30, 2001

Charlotte
Sydney, Australia
Saturday, April 14, 2001

Jamie
Ft.Worth, USA
Wednesday, April 11, 2001

Charles
Sydney, Australia
Sunday, April 8, 2001

Cushla Brennan
Birmingham, UK
Friday, March 30, 2001

Gary Bowers
Phoenix, AZ, USA
Wednesday, March 28, 2001

Sarah Hallman
Leesburg, USA
Monday, March 26, 2001

Irene Stickney
Toronto, Canada
Friday, March 9, 2001

Chuck
Athens, USA
Thursday, February 22, 2001

Laurie Eckhout
Juneau, Alaska, USA
Thursday, February 22, 2001

Jim Lawther
State College, PA, USA
Wednesday, February 21, 2001

Dawn Jackson
Westland, USA
February 19, 2001

Dan Archer
Nanaimo, Canada
Friday, February 9, 2001

Terry Roby
Ann Arbor, USA
Tuesday, January 30, 2001

Charis
Bishops Stortford, England
Thursday, December 14, 2000

This is one of the most highly anthologized poems of Plath's (along with "Lady Lazarus"). It is a notorious poem, the one once compared to "Guernica" by George Steiner. The imagery and audaciousness of it still shock, so much so that I don't even know if it is being taught or anthologized or taught any more; it is almost as if the critical world has had its say on it and has moved on, either to other poems in Ariel, or to other books altogether, such as The Colossus or Crossing The Water. It has become a modern classic, of a kind, the sort some people (not the ones here, of course!) sigh & look back on fondly, as what/who they read when they were younger, or were obliged to read at some point, dutifully used it in an essay, then put back on the shelf when they were done with the course...

"Daddy" is a mean poem, brutal, but at bottom it is about mourning, loss, and what happens when that grief is blocked. I have always taken this as the real topic, that longing to forgive her father, forgive herself, to understand and accept - that was locked, denied, as a part of her childhood, adolescence, until she was 21 and visited (I am taking her literally) her father's grave for the first time. (This poem's essence lies in her not believing her father is dead, and since she never went to his funeral, or even visited his grave as a child, the father is in a strange limbo, a zombie figure.) In 1959 she visited her father's grave and was tempted, oddly as she says, to dig him up & prove to herself that he's really dead.

In the poem, she just wants to be with her father (in the reading, her voice definitely becomes emotional when she remembers her childhood with him), or someone like him, but this never works out; in the end, she turns against him, but, as Stewart says, she can never be "through" - I think, because that sadness is again pushed aside, "the voices" (her father, husband, mother?) who still might be able to talk and listen to her are gone. Her father is still there, just as solid & historical as he was in "The Colossus", and just as misunderstood/inflated (two ways blocked grief seems to work).

From this poem (and a few others) the feminist movement of the 60s took Plath as one of their own; but Plath doesn't seem to have any support here - the villagers are anonymous, a mob, who don't seem to know her. They are trusted by her because they aren't trying to talk to her, question her, they don't have a voice, they just instinctively act against "daddy" (like a swarm of bees, come to think of it). Plath turns against herself in the last line, in a line that shows a disgust with him, and herself - an attempt to not just block but eliminate any communication or feelings altogether. In the few days after writing "Daddy", Plath wrote the equivalent about her mother, "Medusa" - which ends with an equally destructive and ambivalent line, "There is nothing between us."

Lena Friesen
Toronto, Canada
Wednesday, November 29, 2000

I agree that in addition to the anger and violence, 'Daddy' is also pervaded by a strong sense of loss and trauma. The repeated 'You do not do' of the first sentence suggests a speaker that is still battling a truth she only recently has been forced to accept. After all, this is the same persona who in an earlier poem spends her hours attempting to reconstruct the broken pieces of her 'colossus' father. After 30 years of labor she admits to being 'none the wiser' and 'married to shadow', but she remains faithful to her calling. With 'Daddy' not only is the futility of her former efforts acknowledged, but the conditions that forced them upon her are manically denounced. At the same time, and this seems to fire her fury, she admits to her own willing self-deception. The father whom she previously related to the 'Oresteia' and the 'Roman Forum' is now revealed as a panzer man with a Meinkampf look. But she doesn't simply stop at her own complicity. 'Every woman,' she announces 'loves a Fascist/The boot in the face, the brute/Brute heart of a brute like you.' There is obviously a lot of autobiography in the poem, but it deals with more than her bitter feelings towards her father and husband. The historic and allogorical references display a deep resentment towards male power in general; at least when this power is used for the purposes of oppression and destruction. Was Plath a proto-'feminist'? All we know is that her lifetime extended over a period of particular brutality; most noticably the Holocsust, but also the real and threatened violence (nuclear warfare, the Rosenburgs),of the 1950's cold war. Reference is often made to the renewed and heightened awareness to the Holocaust in the early 1960's. But by that time, Plath was in her late 20's. She was a much more impressionable twelve-year-old when the first images of Holocaust victims, in mass graves and standing lifeless behind barbed wire, were beamed across newreels and magazines; images which in all probability she saw, as shown in the poem The Thin People. Plath's confused identification with Jews most likely dated from that time.

In fact, the triumphant tone at the end of the poem is undercut by the unsettled question of identity. The use of nursery-rhyme speech seems to reflect the persona's uncertainty of an adult identification. At the end of the poem, it's the villagers dancing and stamping, without mention of the speaker. This regression to child-speak is very telling. It is symbolically the language used when her father was still alive. After writing 'Daddy', Plath spoke of these childhood years as 'beautiful, inacessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth', but also sealed off like 'a ship in a bottle.' In her mind, the identity of these years ended with the actual death of her father; and this loss is relived once again in the symbolic death that occurs in the poem: 'Daddy, I have had to kill you./You died before I had time---.' Whatever revenge she achieved, it was paid for at a high price.

Paul Snyder
New York City, USA
Tuesday, November 7, 2000

The speaker of "Daddy" might be seen as our collective inner child, the voice of a world that has "fallen a long way." There is an implied gain in the poem -- of catharsis, liberation -- but "Daddy" is fundamentally a poem about loss. The speaker has finally and irrevocably disabused herself of the notion of a "recovered" childhood, the dream of "the waters off beautiful Nauset." There is no going "back, back, back" to some illusory idyllic existence, no way to make whole that "pretty red heart": the first oppressor in this poem is the unrealized past ("You died before I had time--"). The poem exemplifies this in its form, the nursery-rhyme sound, the ooh, ooh, ooh of the end rhymes, so jarring in contrast with its substance, its images of stark brutality. Childhood and innocence are corrupted herein by the inescapable internalization of "wars, wars, wars." Conventional images have undergone a desecration: "Not God but a swastika"; not father but devil; not husband but vampire. Language, rather than a means of connection, has become an obstacle, confining the self ("The tongue stuck in my jaw. / It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich . . . ")

Language, as a conveyor of images, is itself the subject of this poem -- the "foot" in line three is as much metrical as it is metaphorical, one could argue. Plath's "Colossus," her apprenticeship in the Western poetic tradition, with this poem is junked in the "freakish Atlantic," just another thrown off oppressor. The language of this world has conveyed the speaker to a place of horrors: "obscene," it is "An engine, an engine / Chuffing me off like a Jew. / A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen." In this sense, Plath's appropriation of Holocaust imagery, much castigated, must be seen as subsequent to that imagery's appropriation of her -- and, by extension, of us all. Plath demonstrates in this poem that the horrors of history are fundamentally personal, that human history is simply personal! history writ large, that the brutalities of the age inform every childhood, that the notion of innocence is a sham, a game of cowboys and Indians, to use a less highly charged analogy, against a backdrop of the Trail of Tears. Where language is "obscene," renunciation (silence) is the only alternative ("the black telephone's off at the root, / The voices just can't worm through"). And the poem does choose silence, in the end, as the oppressed become the oppressors, the speaker is displaced by "the villagers" ("They are dancing and stamping on you"), and the cycle is repeated. The speaker, however, is "through" with this old pattern. What is reached is a dark terminus, no doubt -- but also the Plathian "stasis in darkness" from which a new "child's cry" might rise.

Melissa Dobson
Newport, RI, USA
Tuesday, October 31, 2000

I think that the childish/selfish tone of the poem is part of what makes it work. SP was a child when WWII occured and obviously the spector of the concentration camps stuck with her (see "The Thin People", among others). So all the images here are childhood ones for her. I find it very artfully compiled...how she used autobiography with huge, horriffic events to convey how she herself felt. As for people who say that she 'has no right' etc. to use these images because she has no personal experience of them, etc. i find this logic wrong...what is metaphor, anyway? Are there some metaphors too sacrosanct to be used by writers?

Amy
San Jose, CA, USA
Tuesday, October 31, 2000

Amazing example of "woman's rage."

Parts of this poem are beautifully realized, sonically
and imagistically:

"And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset."

[...]

(Note the homage to her beloved Dylan Thomas and his
_Under Milk Wood_ in L2 above.)

Below she describes her frustration at being unable to communicate with the emotionally unavailable men -- her husband and her father -- to whom she gave away so much of her power; on whose love she placed too high a value:

"I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare."

"Daddy" is a cautionary tale.

Cythera
San Francisco, USA
Tuesday, October 31, 2000

I find Plath's poem "Daddy" to be a bitter and selfish poem. To compare a handful of years spent with your father to the absolutely incredible amount of suffering that prisoners in concentration camps had to endure is arrogant and completely inaccurate. This superfluously embellished analogy between her father and a Nazi soldier is the hyberbolic ranting of an immature adolescent. I am dismayed that she only made passive attempts at suicide, and even then it took her three times to get it right.

Marge
North Sydney, USA
Monday, October 30, 2000

This poem is so emotional and so sad. She is grieving for her father, but she is so bitter. It is interesting that she uses the World War II comparisons and elaborates about the Jews. I thought this poem was great because she expresses emotion, even though it is so depressing.

Megan
Monticello, USA
Sunday, October 29, 2000

I love this poem...It's so emotional and beautiful in a sadly depressing way....This is the poem that got me writing....Sylvia Plath is my favorite poet and the only one I would actually go to the library to cheak out a book of her poety....(I'm 13 in case you were wondering) .....Sylvia Plath is the best poet..... And "Daddy" is the best poem..............

Amanda
El Paso, USA
Sunday, October 15, 2000

Yes, reams can be and have been written about this iconic poem, which I think every emotional post-adolescent lit major has rewritten and re-imagined ad naseum since it first appeared in print. Its power to threaten, shock and move us is undiminished. To the unsuspecting reader, I suspect the experience of first reading "Daddy" is a confusion of discomfort, excitement and guilty pleasure, for the pleasures of revenge are said to be sweet, and this is a revenge poem of the first rank. Revenge upon whom? Father? Perhaps – the wild fantasy of a father, anyway. More accurately, upon her husband. And her aim was true, for if anything Plath wrote damaged Ted Hughes for posterity, "Daddy" is it. From this poem, we gather our indelible impressions of Hughes as a brute, a wife beater, a vampire, even an implied racist and murderer (if we extend the Hitler metaphor to its fullest implications) . . . on and on.

The controversial Holocaust imagery can be directly linked to the period in which the poem was written. In 1961, the entire world was riveted by the Jerusalem trial of Nazi SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolph Eichmann (who was executed in 1962, a few months before "Daddy" was written). This was the first televised trial in history, and for most it was the first they had heard of Hitler’s "Final Solution." The anguished testimonies of camp survivors and the horrifying details that emerged about the cold bureaucratic extermination of six million European Jews caused a frenzy of reaction – it literally rocked the moral fiber of the world, and we’re still reeling (if more jaded). It was a subject on fire in the public imagination at the time. Plath’s appropriation of Holocaust imagery for her own ends, which strikes so many as grossly inappropriate, can perhaps be interpreted as stemming from that initial horrified zeitgeist. Perhaps she felt she was raising consciousness and expressing solidarity of a sort. Her remarks in her interview with Peter Orr about making her poetry "relevant" can be looked at from such an angle.

Of course, the other point of view is that she was stealing other people’s real tragedy and tacking it on to her own little psychic turbulence for shock value and good visceral punch to the reader’s gut. I think we must always keep in mind that Plath, to A. Alvarez, referred to this poem (and "Lady Lazarus", a piece even more riddled with Holocaust imagery) as "a bit of light verse." Was she being sarcastic? Reading Alvarez’s memoir, I think he felt she was quite serious. So what on earth does that tell us about this poet? I do think it implies a profound self-absorption and narcissism. "Chuffing me off like a Jew" -- the callousness of this poem, if one stops to think about it (and it’s very hard to do so while in the poem’s grip), is appalling. Its ramifications are endless where Plath is concerned.

As a socially "relevant" poem, "Daddy" is a failure. As a piece of literary voodoo, it is a resounding success. Is there any other poem in existence that consistently delivers the sensation of an active, malevolent hatred leaping off the page and grabbing the reader by the throat? Revenge, exorcism, voodoo, a hex . . . these are the words that come to my mind when reading "Daddy." Even the rhyme scheme, which many compare to a children’s nursery rhyme (and indeed Plath’s own "The Bed Book" seems to echo that oo oo oo effect throughout), suggests much more strongly a witch’s charm straight out of "Macbeth."

Extremism, hysteria, narcissism . . . perhaps. But this poem is seared into our literature, our culture, like a red hot brand. It will not go away. It will never be "through."

Stewart Clarke
NYC, USA
Friday, October 6, 2000

"Daddy" is probably Plath’s most famous poem. The critic George Steiner has said that, "It is a poem by which future generations will seek to know us." He has also called it, "the Guernica of modern poetry." The violence of its imagery and tone, the references to concentration camps, torture and fascism certainly evoke Picasso’s most celebrated painting.

Plath claimed that in this poem she was adopting the persona of a girl with an Electra complex whose father had been a fascist, but while the poem is not completely autobiographical, it contains several obvious references to her own life. For example, here she refers to the picture of her father:

"You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you"

This is a direct image of the actual photograph the Plaths possessed of Otto in front of his blackboard at the University. Similarly, the "man in black with a Meinkampf look" and the "vampire" who "drank my blood" for "seven years" is a reference to her perception of Hughes to whom she had been married for seven years when this poem was written.

But the poem is not completely autobiographical. Otto Plath had no connection whatsoever with Nazism, so the poet is moving between her own and the persona’s fictional life throughout the poem. This movement between her actual life and her character’s life creates, I feel, some of the problems the poem presents the reader with, which others may wish to discuss further. Some people might believe that it is wrong to appropriate the sufferings of the Jews during the Holocaust as an image for a relatively privileged, Gentile woman’s private, emotional suffering. Another issue is whether this is a love or a hate poem? It contains elements of both. A further difficulty is the apparent celebration of female masochism contained in the line:

"Every woman adores a fascist."

I find it interesting to compare this poem with "Colossus", an earlier poem written on her father and to relate some aspects of the poem to the legends/mythology of the Great Goddess.

In "Colossus" the dead father was tended as an idol but in "Daddy" he is metaphorically killed. Plath no longer seems possessed by the desperate need for security and protection which permeated the earlier poem. A comparison of the poems’ endings illustrate this point. "Colossus" ends on a note of empty despair, and we have the sense of the persona standing bereft and helpless before the memory of the dead:

"My hours are married to a shadow
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing."

In "Daddy" however, we have the sense of the persona in a triumphant, almost exalted state. This is reflected in the language which is no longer the traditional, restrained, poetic diction of the earlier poem but unstrained, slangy and free:

"Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through."

In "Colossus" Plath remains in the classic, passive role of the female who mourns the dying god and sacrifices to the idol. She is still prostrating herself on the altar of masculinity and performing a traditional, feminine role.

In "Daddy", she breaks completely free from the victim position and from the power and influence of men. She appreciates what a victim she has been by referring to herself as a Jew, but transcends this by ceremonially killing her father and husband. This killing is not just an individual one, but is part of a ritual joined in by the whole community:

" There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you."

The sacrificial victims of ancient, Goddess worshipping cultures were invariably male. Males were considered to be more expendable than women who were more necessary for reproduction. The killing of the father and husband in "Daddy" can be seen as symbolic of this ancient rite and as Judith Kroll in "Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath" points out:

"Whenever exorcism, or attempted exorcism, of her father or his proxy occurs it is always as a preliminary to a rebirth which also entails the expulsion of her false self."

This same "false self" could be the one who earlier in the poem claims that all women are innately masochistic. One could write for a long time on "Daddy" - this is just to get us going!

Elaine Connell
Hebden Bridge, UK
Monday, September 25, 2000

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This forum is administered by Elaine Connell, author of Sylvia Plath: Killing The Angel In The House who lives in Hebden Bridge, near where Sylvia Plath is buried and where Ted Hughes was born. Web Design by Pennine Pens. This forum is moderated - contributions which are inappropriate, anonymous or likely to offend may be edited or omitted.