Daddy By Sylvia Plath Figurative Language

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Literature of the Americas
Mahanaz Naser
Response Paper # 2
10/7/2014

The Little Things That Matter

In Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” the speaker of the poem uses figurative language to create an image of her father in our minds. You can already tell by the way she describes her father, you know that she doesn’t have a good relationship with her father. For example when she states “Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time –” (Lines 6-7) it explains even though, her father is long dead, the speaker hasn’t been able to let go of her memories of him. The quote is significant because of the harsh/bitter vibe that the quote is giving off, it explains how the speaker is feeling.

As the story progresses we see the speaker’s tone getting darker, and she states “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.” (Lines 57-60). These lines show show desperate she was to get even with her father. She wanted to kill herself just so she can kill him “again”, to finally end her misery. Which shows the reader how terrible her life was with her father.

As the speaker continues telling the readers about her life with her father, she …show more content…

“A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.” (Lines 33-35). This made me realize, that she felt like a prey in her father eyes, she was always afraid of dying, just like the Jews who had their fate sealed when Hitler became their leader. Plath had stated in the beginning “You do not do, you do not do any more, black shoe, In which I have lived like a foot, For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.” (Lines 1-5), which shows how she’s a prisoner, she compares her father to a shoe in which she’s trapped in. She’s unable to break free from her father's grasp/hold on her life, until the day he dies, even then his memory continued to haunt

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