Daddy by Sylvia Plath

The poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath paints a great picture of a daughter and her Nazi father, but this poem is more than just that. It symbolizes the relationship that they once had, and how it has affected her throughout her whole life. This poem also shows a very generalized depiction of how women see men who have treated them not so greatly.

Although Sylvia’s father was German, he was not a Nazi, which is how she depicted him in her poem “Daddy,” She imagines her father as an ordinary man when she states: “You stand at the blackboard, daddy, in the picture I have of you. A cleft in you chin instead of your foot but no less a devil for that, no not any less the black man who bit my pretty red heart in two, I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you.” This “ordinary man,” in her eyes, has turned into a devil that broke her heart. He treated her poorly, or so that this is impression that we get when she tells us that she was treated like a “Jew in Dachau.”

Having a father figure in one’s life is very important in how that person grows up, and in what type of person they become, as they grow older. Sylvia’s father had a great deal influence in her life, both for the good and the bad. But, she has always been scared of her father by the way he treated her. This may have been one of the biggest reasons why she was suicidal, and why many people considered her crazy.

You can tell that Sylvia very much has had a love-hate relationship with her father throughout her whole life, and we can tell that she has always wanted to love her father. But, her relationship and her memories of her father all seem to go downhill, even after he had died. In writing this poem, Sylvia may be trying to dismiss her memories of her father, and finally let go of the fact that he is dead. She is clearly not over her father’s death at the time this poem was written, which was twenty-two years after the event.

Sylvia attempts to show that her relationship with her father was a love-hate relationship many times in this poem. To prove the hate side of the relationship, she states “Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time,” in the first stanza, in the eleventh stanza, “No less a devil for that, no not any less the black man who bit my pretty red heart in two,” and in the last stanza, “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” To prove that she loved her father she states, “I used to pray to recover you” in the third stanza, and “At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you” in the twelfth stanza. Many people say that they have a love-hate relationship with someone close to them, but I think it is rare if it ever reaches the severity of Sylvia’s relationship with her father.

We see many different events of Sylvia’s relationship with her father in this poem, and although he died when she was eight, she seems to remember much of that time in her life. This could mean two things, either she is blowing her relationship with her father way out of proportion, or this relationship really was terrible. Either way, she is putting the issue on a pedestal, and letting it affect her much more than it should. Most suicidal people tend to think that the issue that they are dealing with is not worth living with. Life is precious, whether we believe it or not. No issue should affect us so greatly that we do not want to live life anymore. I am not trying to mock, but I honestly feel that people who are suicidal are just trying to get attention, but that’s a different topic for a different paper.

On another note, this poem assumes that all Germans were people who hated Jews, and were Nazis. She writes, “I thought every German was you.” Sylvia has made the same mistake that many people have made since before World War II. Not all Germans were Nazis, just as all Russian soldiers in the Red Army were not considered Communist, although Russia was a communist country at the time. That is one assumption that this poem makes that is false.

Emotions are what drive us to sanity’s edge and the effects are far greater than what you would expect out of mere feelings. Unfortunately, Sylvia Plath committed suicide not long after this poem has been written. This poem shows her feelings regarding that of her father throughout her life, and we can only hope that she and her father are in a much more peaceful state now.