Literary Analysis Of Daddy By Sylvia Plath

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Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 27th, 1932. She attended Smith College with a scholarship in 1950 and was married to Ted Hughes. Plath was a gifted and troubled poet, known for the style of her work. On October 12th, 1962 Plath wrote a very unique poem called “Daddy” that was then published in 1965. “Daddy” is perhaps Sylvia Plath’s best-known poem that she has written. Through the use of violet imagery, figurative language and descriptive metaphors, Plath conveys the speaker’s journey of coming to terms with her father who died when she was eight years old. In stanzas one and two, the speaker begins to describe how sorrowful her life was and starts to describe how she portrayed her father. “…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 2-5) Here the speaker is using imagery to describe how she feels she has been living for thirty years, like a poor and white …show more content…

“I never could talk to you/The tongue stuck in my jaw.” (24-25) Gives the impression that she was somewhat intimidated by her father and she could never find the courage to talk to “you.” Plath continues by using figurative language to make the reader imagine how she must have felt to live in the situation that she is in. “It stuck in a barb wire snare./Ich, ich, ich, ich,/I could hardly speak.” (26-28) Here she uses a metaphor to compare not being able to speak with her tongue stuck in a barbed wire snare. “Ich” means “I” in German, which means the speaker was so tongue-tied that she could barely get a word out let alone a sentence. “I thought every German was you./ And the language obscene.” (29-30) Here the speaker is saying that she is upset by the memories of her father because she thought every German was him and that she found his language to be dirty or

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