Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Edgar Allan Poe themes in his writing
Analysis poetry about death
Analysis poetry about death
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Edgar Allan Poe themes in his writing
Poetry has a way of being about any sort of situation we can come to think of. Within this essay, I will be explaining the similarities and the differences between “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Alan Poe and “Daddy” by Sylvia Path. We notice that between these poems, love and death fall hand in hand. These two poems have many similarities and the differences, but in my mind more similarities.
Within both poems, we notice that the authors are discussing how close they want to become to their loved ones, even with them being gone. An example of this is when Plath says,
“At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.” (Plath 1076)
It seems that within these lines we come to the conclusion that Plath tried to commit suicide. My Father isn’t necessarily dead, but he is dead to me. He walked out after promising he would never become the man he did. I know how she feels when she wants to be as close to the person he was but no matter how hard you wish, it wouldn’t happen. I hate my father, but I do still contain the love for him like I did when I was growing up. This seems to be the same way that Sylvia is. Poe also wants to be close to his deceased lover especially at the end of his poem.
I believe that the difference between Plath and Poe though is the fact that they both are missing a family member or loved one, but Sylvia tends to have a sense of hatred towards her father whereas Poe has nothing but pure love for his. We seem them reflect back onto their loved ones and the memories they shared. Poe reflects back into the youth with his lover giving slight details:
“I was a child and she was a
Both poems are set in the past, and both fathers are manual labourers, which the poets admired as a child. Both poems indicate intense change in their fathers lives, that affected the poet in a drastic way. Role reversal between father and son is evident, and a change of emotion is present. These are some of the re-occurring themes in both poems. Both poems in effect deal with the loss of a loved one; whether it be physically or mentally.
The poem is written in the father’s point of view; this gives insight of the father’s character and
The first two stanzas, lines 1-10, tell the readers that Plath, for thirty years, has been afraid of her father, so scared that she dares not to “breathe or Achoo.” She has been living in fear, although she announces that he’s already dead. It is obvious that she believes that her father continues to control her life from the grave. She says that she “has had to kill” him, but he’s already dead, indicating her initial promise to forget him. She calls him a “bag full of God,” telling us that she considers her father a very strong, omnipotent being, someone who is superior in her eyes.
In American society, the common stereotype is that the father has the role of the dominant figure in the household. Sylvia Plath and Sharon Olds may come across as two seemingly different poets, however, they are really quite similar, especially in their driving forces behind their writing styles in poetry. The lives of Plath and Olds are both expressive of the realities of a father-dominated family, in which both of these poets lost their fathers at a young age. This is significant because both poets have faced a similar traumatic event that has had everlasting effects on their adult womanhood, which is reflected in their writings. For both these woman, their accesses to father-daughter relationships were denied based on life circumstances. Ironically, their fathers were their muses for writing and are what made them the women they are today.
Sylvia Plath a highly acclaimed twentieth century American poet whose writings were mostly influenced by her life experiences. Her father died shortly after her eighth birthday and her first documented attempt at suicide was in her early twenties. She was married at age twenty-three and when she discovered her husband was having an affair she left him with their two children. Her depression and the abandonment she felt as a child and as a woman is what inspires most of her works. Daddy is a major decision point where Plath decides to overcome her father’s death by telling him she will no longer allow his memory to control her.
... overall themes, and the use of flashbacks. Both of the boys in these two poems reminisce on a past experience that they remember with their fathers. With both poems possessing strong sentimental tones, readers are shown how much of an impact a father can have on a child’s life. Clearly the two main characters experience very different past relationships with their fathers, but in the end they both come to realize the importance of having a father figure in their lives and how their experiences have impacted their futures.
...lems, such as depression, sadness, overbearing and domineering figures. The themes shared in each poem is also a common similarity, such as the example of numbness. The choice in the speaker of each poem is also important, and also share a similarity between the two poets. The idea that the two women wrote poems that shared stories from their own life is not far-fetched, especially in the case of Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”. Of the three poems, I found “Daddy” to be the easiest to understand because of its full sentences and vivid description. Furthermore, since the poets wrote as if the speaker of the poem was themselves, I found that their poems were more emotional and gripping than if they were not. Because of this, I considered their poetry very similar in that the speakers are like-minded emotionally, but the writing style of the poets themselves is different.
"Sylvia Plath poem written two weeks before she died reveals 'disturbed' state of mind." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 30 Apr. 2013. Web. 1 June 2014.
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.
She then describes that husband as a vampire that drank her blood (lines 72-74), because he reminded Plath of her father in the statement “They always knew it was you” (line 79). In Plath’s mind she only married her husband to be reminded of her father but soon realized it was a toxic relationship in line 80 in which she says “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through”. Even with the differences in relationship with their fathers, both Sylvia Plath and Theodore Roethke struggled with depression and mental illness due to losing a major parental figure like their fathers at young ages.
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.
Leenaars, A. A. & Wenckstern, S. (1998). Sylvia Plath: A protocol analysis of her last poems. Death Studies, October 1, 1998, Vol. 22, Issue 7, ISSN: 0748-1187. Retrieved May 6, 2005 from Academic Search Premier Database.
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.
Through her dark and intense poetry, Sylvia Plath left an eternal mark on the literary community. Her personal struggles with depression, insecurities, and suicidal thoughts influenced her poetry and literary works. As a respected twentieth century writer, Sylvia Plath incorporated various literary techniques to intensify her writing. Her use of personification, metaphors, and allusions in her poems “Ariel,” “Lady Lazarus,” and “Edge”, exemplifies her talent as a poet and the influence her own troubled life had on her poetry. According to “Sylvia Plath” Sylvia Plath struggled with severe depression throughout her life.
A brief introduction to psychoanalysis is necessary before we can begin to interpret Plaths poems. Art is the expression of unconscious infantile desires and the strongest of these desires is the wish to “do away with his father and…to take his mother to wife” (Freud, “Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis 411).This is what Freud called the Oedipal conflict. For women the desire is of course reversed to killing the mother and marrying the father and is called the Electra complex. Children resolve this conflict by identifying with their same sex parent. Loss of a parent can prevent the normal resolution of the Oedipal conflict and result in a fixation or obsession with the lost object (object is the term used to define the internal representations of others). The desire to have the lost object back is also the desire for what Freud called primary narcissism. ...