Slyvia Plath's Daddy

People as individuals have a mixture of feelings and emotions. Some people deal with emotions and feelings by expressing themselves with a sense of freedom while others hold them to ourselves in confinement. "Daddy" is a disturbing – but artful – howl from a woman who has lost her father and her husband. Plath's language is as playful as it is scathing. The speaker expresses herself as if she were the victim of an error that her current insights empower her to rectify. She suffers from the intractable consequences of fate. Slyvia Plath’s “Daddy” is a morose poem filled with hurt and blame which explores the theme of confinement and freedom.

The speaker shows many signs that her relationship with her father was full of anxiousness and sorrow.

In lines 55 and 56, the speaker gives an example of the emotion she went through when her heart felt broken. “Any less the black man who; Bit my pretty red heart in two.” (Plath). She uses imagery to support the concept of feeling inferior to a male, as shown by the powerful image of her father described as the devil himself. Rage is also one of the main emotions shown throughout the poem. The speaker shows how agitated and mentally drained she feels in the confinement of her father’s no ending memories. “What is the speaker’s understanding of the predicament from which she seeks to escape? Certainly, the sincerity of her testimony is as apparent as her anguish and rage ” (Leondopoulos “ Daddy”) The speaker explains her mental confinement of rage by guiding

Besides feeling livid she also feels like she has been a victim of her father. The theme of violence plays an essential role in which the speaker is portrayed as a victim. Specific references are made about Germany, Hitler, the war, and the Jew’s struggles by the speaker. ““I thought every German was you. / And the language obscene / An engine, an engine / Chuffing me off like a Jew”” (Strangeways ‘The Boot in the Face). The interpretation in the lines explain that the speaker brings together her fear and terror of her father with the struggle of the Jewish people against the Germans. Which the speaker describes in a bold and disturbing metaphor. “The speaker's heavily syncopated speech holds a keen power, and the war imagery adds to the violence of the poem.” (Strangeways ‘The Boot in the Face’). Tying together, realities from a historical era, while understanding the character conflict are both interesting and mind capturing. Such notations and instances lead the author to inform the reader that she is dealing with many internal confinements but is searching for