“Can you play me a memory? I’m not really sure how it goes, but it’s sad and it’s sweet, and I knew it complete.” – Billy Joel, Piano Man. Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” reveals anger and sadness. This poem is full of emotions and it is very strong and passionate. Whereas Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” is very hazy and full of descriptions about abuse and alcohol. In this paper I will be comparing and contrasting the two poems as they are in my eyes very similar, yet different.
Sylvia Plath was a high string anxiety angered person and dealt with a lot growing up. Her dad died when she was 10 years old due to diabetes. Having to grow up without a father she tried to fill the place of her father almost by being forced to find a husband that was like her father. Plath wrote the poem “Daddy” about her father about four months before she committed suicide in 1963. Theodore Roethke had a serious bipolar disorder. He along with Plath had difficult times while growing up because like Plath Roethke also grew up with his father. Theodore Roethke’s was 14 years old when his father died due to cancer.
“Daddy” is a dark piece of poetry reality her father to German Nazism and exploring her father’s death. She was also extremely depressed while writing this piece Plath uses the allusion of Nazism throughout the whole poem. In the same area where she strongly uses that allusion she uses onomatopoeias and metaphors. Plath writes “An engine, an engine/ Chuffing me off like a Jew.” She uses the word “chuffing” to mimic the sounds of trains and they drive, it’s a great onomatopoeia because it goes into the next line. When she writes “A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.” It makes me wonder if she felt like a Jew that was headed to a concentration cam...
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...eaking role of how fathers have the upper hand over everything and back in that time era the abuse is sort of what happened. I found the sense of the boy feeling he played a feminine role in the poem because he was the weaker link and too young to fight for himself. Sadly, that is what happens with females they get too scared to fight back and stand up for the respect that they deserve.
In conclusion of these two pieces “Daddy” and “My Papa’s Waltz” you can see how much thought and true feelings these two amazing authors put into them. “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath was raw and full of emotions of how she felt towards her father. Theodore Roethke also did a terrific job writing “My Papa’s Waltz” this was full of descriptions and really made you feel like you were in his position. Both authors did a great job at executing both pieces and really put all they had into them.
The most notable qualities of Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” are the tone and language of the poem which convey the nostalgia adult author feels thinking about the time spent with his father. In the title narrator’s father is affectionately referred to as “Papa” making the impression that the main character and his father are close. The use of possessive pronoun “my” contributes to the overall impression that the father holds special place in the narrator’s heart. As word “waltz” in the title implies the poem gives account of the festive occasion in which the narrator’s father takes part.
Abuse is a difficult and sensitive subject that can have long lasting effects. These traumatic emotional effects are often intensified if the abuse happens at a young age because children do not understand why the abuse is happening or how to deal with it. There are many abuse programs set up to counter the severe effects which abuse can have. Even more, poets and writers all over the world contribute works that express the saddening events and force the public to realize it is much more real than the informative articles we read about. One such poem is Theodore Roethke’s My Papa’s Waltz which looks carefully through the eyes of a young boy into the household of an abusive father. Robert Hayden’s Those Winter Sundays is a similar poem from the perspective of a young adult reflecting back on the childhood relationship with his father and the abuse his father inflicted. These poems are important because they deal with the complex issues surrounding the subject of abuse and also show the different ways which children react to it. My Papa’s Waltz and Those Winter Sundays are similar poems because they use tone, imagery, and sounds and rhythms to create tension between the negative aspects of abuse and the boys own love and understanding for their father.
The overall general theme of both poems is about the author’s father. Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” and Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” may both reference their fathers, but their relationship and attitudes towards them differ immensely. “My Papa’s Waltz” features a theme of fear and love towards the father, while “Daddy” features hatred and loathing towards her father. Roethke uses imagery and diction that makes the reader feel different emotions. The imagery of a father with whiskey on his breath and battered knuckles paints a picture of a scruffy, rugged man.
Using a strand of harsh words including “beat,” “scraped,” “battered,” and “whiskey,” the narrator suggests an idea of a harsh relationship despite any fond memories that were discussed. If the narrator simply intended to reflect a warm commemoration, he could have used a strand of words that implied happiness or comfort. The author was clearly aware that at first glance, readers typically assume the poem is about an abusive relationship; nevertheless, he neglected to alter his poem, demonstrating the idea that negative memories of the father do exist.
...nal family. The second poem uses harsh details described in similes, metaphors, and personification. The message of a horribly bad childhood is clearly defined by the speaker in this poem. Finally, the recollection of events, as described by the two speakers, is distinguished by the psychological aspect of how these two children grew up. Because the first child grew up in a passive home where everything was hush-hush, the speaker described his childhood in that manner; trying to make it sound better than what it actually was. The young girl was very forward in describing her deprivation of a real family and did not beat around the bush with her words. It is my conclusion that the elements of tone, imagery, and the recollection of events are relevant to how the reader interprets the message conveyed in a poem which greatly depends on how each element is exposed.
Childhood experiences seem to be the ones that are recollected most vividly throughout a person's life. Almost everyone can remember some aspect of his or her childhood experiences, pleasant and unpleasant alike. Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz" suggests even further that this concept could be true. The dance described in this poem illustrates an interaction between father and child that contains more than the expected joyous, loving attitude between the two characters. Roethke's tone in this work exhibits the blended, yet powerful emotions that he, as a grown man, feels when looking back on this childhood experience. The author somewhat implicates feelings of resentment fused with a loving reliance with his father.
While most of us think back to memories of our childhood and our relationships with our parents, we all have what he would call defining moments in our views of motherhood or fatherhood. It is clearly evident that both Theodore Roethke and Robert Hayden have much to say about the roles of fathers in their two poems as well. While the relationships with their fathers differ somewhat, both men are thinking back to a defining moment in their childhood and remembering it with a poem. "My Papa's Waltz" and "Those Winter Sundays" both give the reader a snapshot view of one defining moment in their childhood, and these moments speak about the way these children view their fathers. Told now years later, they understand even more about these moments.
In Plath's "Daddy," written just before her death and published posthumously, the most readily accessible emotion is anger, and much of the poem is couched in autobiographical allusions. Plath's own father died of a gangrenous infection, caused by diabetes he refused to treat, when Plath was eight years old, and his death was "the crucial event of her childhood" (Baym 2743). Plath makes personal references to her father as a...
Sylvia Plath was born on 27 October 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Plath’s father was a very strict man with dictatorial attitudes that stuck with and scarred Plath. Her father died due to complications with his diabetes when Plath was only eight years old, inspiring her poem “Daddy” (Academy of American Poets). “Daddy” is one of her most famous works that basically declares her hatred for her father.
In the poem, “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath shows her character to have a love for her father as well as an obvious sense of resentment and anger towards him. She sets the tone through the structure of the poem along with her use of certain diction, imagery, and metaphors/similes. The author, Sylvia Plath, chooses words that demonstrate the characters hatred and bitterness towards the oppression she is living with under the control of her father and later, her husband. Plath’s word choice includes many words that a child might use. There is also an integration of German words which help set the tone as well. She creates imagery through her use of metaphors and similes which allow the reader to connect certain ideas and convey the dark, depressing tone of the poem.
Sylvia Plath’s life was full of disappointment, gloominess and resentment. Her relationship status with her parents was hostile and spiteful, especially with her father. Growing up during World War II did not help the mood of the nation either, which was dark and dreary. At age 8 Plath’s father of German ancestry died of diabetes and even though their relationship was never established nor secure, his death took a toll on her. “For Sylvia, who had been his favorite, it was an emotional holocaust and an experience from which she never fully recovered” (Kehoe 90). Since she was so young she never got to work out her unsettled feelings with him. Even at age eight, she hid when he was around because she was fearful of him. When she was in his presence his strict and authoritarian figure had left an overpowering barrier between their relationship. Sadly enough by age eight Plath instead of making memories with her dad playing in the yard she resented him and wanted nothing to do with him (Kehoe). These deep-seated feelings played a major role in Plath’s poetry writings. Along with his “hilterian figure,” her father’s attitude towards women was egotistical and dismissive, uncondemning. This behavior infuriated Plath; she was enraged about the double standard behavior towards women. Plath felt controlled in male-dominated world (Lant). “Because Plath associates power so exclusively with men, her conviction that femininity is suffocating and inhibiting comes as no surprise” (Lant 631). This idea of a male-dominated world also influenced Plath’s writing. Unfortunately, Plath married a man just like her father Ted Hughes. “Hughes abandonment apparently stirred in her the memories and feelings she had struggled with when her ...
Dan Brown rightly said that no love is greater than that of a father and a son. It’s not just flesh and mind but the hearts that connect a father and a son. “My papa’s Waltz”, by Theodore Roethke and “Those Winter Sundays”, by Robert Hayden, both describe the relationship between a father and a son. These poems share a common idea of revealing the relationship that the speakers share with their fathers and the poems simultaneously, offer a means of discovering and interpreting the setting, tone and theme among other elemental aspects of poetry. The poems seem a lot different, however they are alike in many significant ways. Both the poems swing around the different childhood memories of the speakers, yet show how love crosses all the borders of bitterness.
According to “Sylvia Plath” Sylvia Plath struggled with severe depression throughout her life. She first experienced depression during her third year of college because of insecurities and self-esteem issues. Furthermore, Plath’s troubled marriage with Ted Hughes fueled her depression later in life; he had cheated on her with a younger woman and left her to raise their two children. Once again, she was overcome by self-esteem issues and anxiety that led her down a dark path. Plath attempted suicide three times, and she succeeded on her third attempt at the age of thirty. She died
First of all, it should be decided who is the speaker in poem "Daddy". This issue as well as the controversial use of Holocaust imagery by Sylvia Plath may be resolved with quoting here her own words, which explain who the speaker is :
Plath’s father died early in her life leaving her with unresolved feelings, and this brought a lot of troubles later on in life. Sylvia was a great student but when she was overwhelmed with disappointments after a month in New York, she attempted suicide (“Sylvia Plath”). After receiving treatment and recovering, she returned to school and later moved to England where she met her future husband, Ted Hughes (“Sylvia Plath”). Their marriage with two children didn’t last when Ted had an affair. They separated and Ted moved in with the new woman, leaving Sylvia and their two children. Battling depression during this time, Sylvia soon ended her life. She left behind numerous writings that many might see as signs of her depression and suicide attempts.