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The importance of poetry
What is the importance of poetry
The importance of poetry
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Poetry often allows readers to identify complex issues through the underlying idea or theme. Robert Hayden, Sylvia Plath, and Shakespeare vividly express their perspectives through the theme of love, providing readers with various outlooks into their individual perceptions of love. For instance, Hayden conveys his conflicting feelings of love towards his foster father. As a young child Hayden perceived his father as cold and grim. However, as an adult he becomes fully aware of the sacrifices his father made for him as a child in the name of love. Similarly, Plath professes her unresolved feelings about her daddy’s domineering love. Frequently, Plath identifies herself as a victim of his venomous affection, one in which she can not escape through …show more content…
However, Hayden and Plath evoke dark, somber, and negative images and emotions throughout their text using tone and figurative language. Hayden uses symbolism to illustrate his disharmonious relationship between himself and his father. In “Those Winter Sundays” Hayden’s father warms the house with his “blueback cold … cracked hands” (lines 2 and 3) to create an atmosphere of warmth. The icy temperatures, inside and outside, of Hayden’s home reflect his cutting, frigid feelings towards his father. The neologism, “blueblack”, truly captures the essence of the cold, early Sunday mornings his father suffers at the expense of his son’s well-being. In lines fourteen and fifteen Hayden writes, “What did I know, what did I know/ of love’s austere and lonely offices?”: these lines define his father’s Sunday sacrifices. “The religious connotations of the final word, offices, elevate the father’s devoted service to his family - as depicted throughout the poem - to the level of worship” (Hatcher, para 4). Likewise, Plath uses similes and metaphors to effectively represent the negative relationship between her father and herself. Throughout “Daddy” Plath gradually assumes the role of a Jew through poetic identification and illustrates her father as an extreme Nazi, vampire, and devil. Plath writes, “I begin to talk like a Jew/ I think I may well be a Jew/ … I may be a bit of a Jew” (lines 34-35 and 40) to metaphorically demonstrate her father’s vitriolic will cowering over her innocent being. Correspondingly, Shakespeare uses antithesis in the last two lines of Sonnet 116 to strengthen his individual conviction to the ideal he describes. Shakespeare’s confidence lies in the final couplet: “If this be error and upon me proved,/ I never writ, nor no man ever loved” (lines 13 and 14). More simply, if Shakespeare mistook his interpretation of true love, then he did not write and no other being ever loved
“Daddy” contains allusions to World War 2 with images of a swastika in the sky (line 46-47) and references to German concentration camps, “A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen” (line 33). She states her father clearly to be a German man with “I thought every German was you” (line 29), “with your Luftwaffe” (line 42), “And your Aryan eye, bright blue” (line 44). Plath alludes to the popular anti-Semitism of her era in Germany depicted in lines 31-40. She then describes herself as a “Jew” to degrade herself against her German father. The diction of her lines “Chuffing me off like a Jew” (line 32) and “I think I may well be a Jew” (line 35) dehumanizes Jews in which she uses to also describe herself. To describe even more hatred towards her father, the multiple usages of the word “black” (lines 2, 51, 55, 65, 76) depicts her father as a dark menacing shadow in her life that has a evil dark “black” heart. She compares him to the man she married when Plath states, “I made a model of you” (line 64). 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”.
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.
The poem “Those Winter Sundays” displays a past relationship between a child and his father. Hayden makes use of past tense phrases such as “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking” (6) to show the readers that the child is remembering certain events that took place in the past. Although the child’s father did not openly express his love towards him when he was growing up, the child now feels a great amount of guilt for never thanking his father for all the things he actually did for him and his family. This poem proves that love can come in more than one form, and it is not always a completely obvious act.
Throughout these six poems the relationship between parent and child are all expressed in unique ways. While ‘Daddy’ by Sylvia Plath displays the hatred towards her father through the use of metaphors, the other five poems examined all show strong bonds between the parent and the child, though it may not seem so all the time. All these poets express their themes through the use of mood and tone, structure, language, literary devices (such as metaphors, similes, alliteration) and through the use of polysemous words or phrases. This specific theme can evoke many emotions in a reader, and can make them reflect on their own relationships towards a parent or child.
His ungratefulness as a child has now emerged on him, leaving the speaker ashamed of taking his father’s hard work for granted. In this poem he writes, “…fearing the chronic angers of that house//Speaking indifferently to him/who had driven out the cold…” (Hayden, 17). When he quotes “fearing chronic angers”, the speaker refers to his view of life as a child, and how he interpreted his father’s agony and self-sacrifice as anger towards him. With an apathetic and cold attitude that accompanied his youth, he did not recognize the love that his father had for him. Hayden also writes, “What did I know, What did I know…” (Hayden 17). Repeating this rhetorical question twice it is obvious that the speaker, now as an adult, feels deep remorse over the way he had treated his father. With a matured mind, Hayden came to the realization that love comes in all shapes and forms, and his father’s love was shown through his selfless
Plath and Sexton's lifetimes spanned a period of remarkable change in the social role of women in America, and both are obviously feminist poets caught somewhere between the submissive pasts of their mothers and the liberated futures awaiting their daughters. With few established female poets to emulate, Plath and Sexton broke new ground with their intensely personal, confessional poetry. Their anger and frustration with female subjugation, as well as their agonizing personal struggles and triumphs appear undisguised in their works, but the fact that both Sexton and Plath committed suicide inevitably colors what the reader gleans from their poems. However, although their poems, such as Plath's "Daddy" and Sexton's "Little Girl, My String Bean, My Lovely Woman," deal with the authors' private experiences, they retain elements of universality; their language cuts through a layer of individual perspective to reach a current of raw emotion common to all human, but especially female, understanding.
Love and Hate are powerful emotions that influence and control how we interact with people. To express this influence and control and the emotions associated with love and hate, for instance, joy, admiration, anger, despair, jealousy, and disgust, author's craft their writing with literary elements such as as structure, figurative language, imagery, diction, symbolism, and tone. Poems in which these can be seen present are “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning, and “Sonnet 130” by William Shakespeare. Within “My Papa’s Waltz” a mighty love is seen between the father and son. To express this Roethke uses figurative language, symbolism and diction. Within “My Last Duchess” there is little love, but an ample hate towards the duchess from the Duch. To express this the
Relationships between two people can have a strong bond and through poetry can have an everlasting life. The relationship can be between a mother and a child, a man and a woman, or of one person reaching out to their love. No matter what kind of relationship there is, the bond between the two people is shown through literary devices to enhance the romantic impression upon the reader. Through Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham,” Ben Jonson’s “To Celia,” and William Shakespeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” relationships are viewed as a powerful bond, an everlasting love, and even a romantic hymn.
Sylvia Plath’s jarring poem ‘Daddy’, is not only the exploration of her bitter and tumultuous relationship with her father, husband and perhaps the male species in general but is also a strong expression of resentment against the oppression of women by men and the violence and tyranny men can and have been held accountable for. Within the piece, the speaker creates a figurative image of her father by using metaphors to describe her relationship with him: “Not God but a Swastika” , he is a “… brute” , even likening him to leader of the Nazi Party; Adolf Hitler: “A man in black with a Meinkampf look .” Overall, the text is a telling recount of her hatred towards her father and her husband of “Seven years” and the tolling affect it has had on
Imagery in literature provides the writer with an instrument for establishing a viewpoint or perspective. The author can use an unlimited amount of symbols, similes, and metaphors that produce an atmosphere for the reader to visualize the story effectively. In the poem "Daddy," written by Sylvia Plath, the author utilizes numerous clusters of images to represent the fury and wrath of a crazed woman haunted by her father's frightening and domineering disposition. Plath uses this imagery to depict the emotional chaos controlling fathers inflict on their offspring.
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.
Throughout the poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, the author struggles to escape the memory of her father who died when she was only ten years old. She also expresses anger at her husband, Ted Hughes, who abandoned her for another woman. The confessional poem begins with a series of metaphors about Plath's father which progress from godlike to demonic. Near the end, a new metaphor emerges, when the author realizes that her estranged husband is actually the vampire of her dead father, sent to torture her. This hyperbole is central to the meaning of the poem. Lines 75-76 express a hope that they will stop oppressing her: "Daddy, you can lie back now / There ís a stake in your fat black heart." She concludes that her father can return to the grave, because she has finally rid herself of the strain he had caused her, by killing his vampire form. Despite this seeming closure, however, we will see that the author does not overcome her trauma.
In the poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath shows how she gets over the feeling of love and
Plaths Poetry can be understood through the psychoanalytic model. The motifs of oral fixation, sadomasochism and the desire to return to primary narcissism are consistent throughout Plaths Poetry. Overall these motifs represent the desire to return to the state of primary narcissism and to be reunited with the incestuous love object.
Sylvia Plath has brought the attention of many Women’s studies supporters while being recognized as a great American poet. Most of her attention has come as a result of her tragic suicide at age thirty, but many of her poems reflect actual events throughout her life, transformed into psychoanalytical readings. One of Plath’s most renowned poems is “Daddy”. In this poem there are ideas about a woman’s relationship with men, a possible insight on aspects of Plath’s life, and possible influences from the theories of Sigmund Freud.