Daddy by Sylvia Plath | Structure, Summary, Analysis
Hello and welcome to the Discourse. ‘Daddy’ is perhaps Sylvia Plath’s best-known poem. The poem was first published in Ariel in 1965 and later included in The Collected Poems in 1981. Plath wrote "Daddy" on October 12, 1962, shortly after separating from her husband, Ted Hughes. This period was marked by intense emotional turmoil for her. It is a powerful and complex poem that delves into themes of male authority, trauma, and the struggle for identity. Told from the perspective of a woman addressing her father, the memory of whom has an oppressive power over her, the poem details the speaker's struggle to break free of his influence. The poem explores the deification and mythologizing of authority figures, particularly the speaker's father. It reflects on the speaker's complex feelings towards her father, combining love and resentment. Sylvia Plath lost her father at a very young age.
The speaker begins by idolizing her father and presenting him as the most important figure in her past. The speaker expresses her anger as a woman who felt oppressed by her parents' expectations of her, society's hindering roles in place for women, and her ex-husband's unfaithfulness. The struggle to break free from the shadow of her father's influence is a central theme. In the poem, the speaker alludes to the toxic male authority symbolized by her father, comparing ‘Daddy’ to a Nazi soldier. The poet uses Holocaust imagery to symbolize the pain and terror of oppression that she as a female felt in the patriarchal setup. In addition, the poet also uses other violent myths and history, including those of Electra, vampirism, and voodoo. In the end, the speaker alludes to her marriage as a continuation of the struggle and oppression.
Structure of Daddy:
The poem has 90 lines set in 16 quintains (five-line stanzas). However, there is no other specific pattern or form for the poem, that is poem is written in free-verse quintains. The regularity of stanza length and short lines suggests a weird nursery rhyme. Plath has used irregular meter for the poem. The meter is roughly tetrameter, four beats, but also uses pentameter with a mix of stresses (iambs, anapests, trochee). The poet has used enjambment, end-stopped lines, metaphor, simile, imagery, symbolism, allusion, apostrophe, onomatopoeia, repetition, and alliteration in the poem.
Summary of Daddy:
Stanza 1 Lines 1-5
“You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.”
The speaker begins with an apostrophe as she directly addresses her father (whom she lost when she was eight). The speaker says that for 30 years, she has been living trapped inside the memory of her father, but now she will get rid of it. She uses metaphor to compare the oppressive dominance of her father (or his memories) over her with a ‘black shoe.’ Inside a tight shoe, it is dark and there is no air. While a shoe is expected to protect the foot, a tight shoe may cause trouble and aches. The speaker is not wearing that shoe though, she feels as if she is living in it, trapped, in the dark, bearing the weight of her whole existence. The speaker says after 30 years, she will no longer be trapped in the memory of her father. The speaker feels that the poverty, ill condition, fear, and inability to breathe, or sneeze (Achoo) are all due to his father’s oppressive dominance over her which still lingers. Achoo is an example of onomatopoeia. The poet used repetition in the very first line and when repetition is so close, it is termed epizeuxis.
The metaphor ‘black shoe’ and the image of the speaker living in a black shoe alludes to the popular nursery rhyme "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe."
Stanza 2 Lines 6-10
“Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal”
In line 6, the speaker directly addresses her father as Daddy (apostrophe). The speaker reveals the extent of oppression she might have felt as she declares that had he not died, she would have killed him. She explains that she did not have time to kill her father, because he died before she could manage to do it. The speaker uses metaphor to express that her father was God to her. However, he was a heavy, huge statue (of God) with no feelings for her. Sylvia’s father suffered diabetic gangrene and one of his feet was amputated. She describes the remaining toe as a seal, suggesting how enormous and overbearing her father seemed to her. He was hardened, without feelings, and now that he is dead, she thinks he looks like an enormous, ominous statue. The speaker uses hyperbole to show how small and insignificant she feels to her father who has taken up her entire life. She compares him to a statue that has overtaken all of the United States. For her, her father, or his memories are larger than life. He is also evil.
Stanza 3 Lines 11-15
“And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.”
In this stanza, the speaker reveals that for her, her father was her whole world. She continues the metaphor of the statue of God. The statue's head is in the Atlantic, on the coast at Nauset Beach, Cape Cod, where the Plath family used to holiday. The father icon stretches across the USA. She mentions how earnestly she prayed for her father’s recovery as a kid. The last line is a German phrase, meaning ‘Oh, you.’ Her father was a German immigrant to the USA.
Stanza 4 Lines 16-20
“In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend”
In this stanza, the poet remembers her father came from a Polish town, where German was the main language spoken. She explains that the town he grew up in had endured one war after another. She alludes to the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. She mentions that she would never be able to identify which specific town her father was from because the name of his hometown was common. She learned this from her Polack friend.
Stanza 5 Lines 21-25
“Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.”
The speaker continues to explain what her friend from Poland has said. There are more than a dozen towns by the same name in Poland. So she can't ascertain which specific town her father was from. All this information she gathered from her friend as she never had a talk with her father. The speaker hints at a lack of communication, instability, and paralysis due to fear of her father, she just couldn’t converse with her father. He was so strict and terrifying,
Stanza 6 Lines 26-30
“It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene”
The speaker continues to remember how fearful she felt whenever she was with her father during her childhood. Whenever she tried to speak, she stumbled and continued to repeat ‘ich, ich, ich,… which is the German word for ‘I’. She was unable to communicate with him. She explains that despite being her father, he was nothing specific for her and she felt as if every German was her father, strict, harsh, and obscene.
Stanza 7 Lines 31-35
“An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.”
In this stanza, the speaker alludes to the ‘death trains’ (engine, engine) taking her off to a Nazi concentration camp where millions of Jews were cruelly tortured, gassed, and cremated during World War II. "Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen", were concentration camps where Jews were worked to death, starved, and murdered. She uses a simile to make the connection more prominent, saying "I began to talk like a Jew. / I think I may well be a Jew". The speaker associates her fear and terror of her father with the struggle of the Jewish people against the Nazis.
Stanza 8 Lines 36-40
“The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.”
In these lines, the speaker mentions how her father had a strict code of morality, purity, and behavior. The white snow and the clear beer contrast starkly with the dark deeds inflicted by Nazis in the name of racial purity. The speaker is consciously, and deliberately choosing sides. The speaker identifies not only with Jews but also with gypsies. In fact, she seems to identify with anyone who has ever felt oppressed by the Germans. In the last line of the stanza, the speaker suggests that she is probably part Jewish and part Gypsy.
Stanza 9 Lines 41-45
“I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——”
The speaker continues the allusion to Nazi German as her father and admits that she has always been afraid of him. "Luftwaffe" is the German air force; "gobbledygoo" is gibberish or a childlike word that conveys her disdain for the German. This implies that the speaker feels that her father and his language made no sense to her. In this instance, she felt afraid of him and feared everything about him. She calls herself a Jew and her father a Nazi killer. He was Aryan, with blue eyes. He was something fierce and terrifying to the speaker. A Panzer-man means a German tank driver.
Stanza 10 Lines 46-50
“Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.”
Sylvia’s father was never a Nazi. Yet, he was a male and she suffered oppressive male authority. In the second stanza, she compares her father to God, here she asserts that he was not God but a German swastika, another symbol of oppression. The swastika was so big it blacked out the entire sky, or the speaker’s whole world. In the next lines, the speaker expresses the helplessness of women in general. Men are fascist, oppressive, and brute while women are oppressed victims. Yet, they are expected to adore their men. Perhaps she's saying that in relationships, women are dominated by men. To love a man you must be masochistic. This statement may also be more bitterly sarcastic than true. If it is meant as a statement of fact, it's criticizing women as well as the brutes they love.
Stanza 11 Lines 51-55
“You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who”
The speaker describes a photo of her father, and in the picture, he's standing at a blackboard, probably in a classroom, teaching. Sylvia’s father was a biology professor. In the next 3 lines, the speaker compares her father to the devil as she notices the picture. Her father had a cleft on his chin. The devil is often depicted as some sort of animal, like a goat, that has hooves and not feet. Devil is often depicted with a cleft or indent in his feet. Like many other stanzas in the poem, this too ends with an enjambment, a poetic device in which an idea is split between two lines.
Stanza 12 Lines 56-60
“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.
I thought even the bones would do.”
In this stanza, the speaker expresses her deep affection for her father. While her father had a cleft on his chin, he was no less than the devil with a cleft on his feet. She loved him so much that losing him bit her heart in two. Though she loved him, he was no less a cruel man. She depicts her father as huge, evil, and black (opposite of light or innocence), while her heart is pretty red, and a victim. Sylvia’s father died when she was a little more than 8, however, in the poem she mentions she was ‘ten’ when her father died and was buried. Ten years later, when she was twenty, she attempted to die as well. She confesses that the reason she attempted suicide was to get back to her father. She thought that even if she was never to see him again in the afterlife, simply having her bones buried by his bones would be enough of a comfort to her. The speaker repeats ‘back’ three times (epizeuxis), the repetition here emphasizes her futile desperation.
Stanza 13 Lines 61-65
“But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look”
Though she tried to kill herself to be with her father even in death, the doctors didn’t let her die, she was pulled back. Though she was broken and lost, the doctors helped her regain but someone who has been glued back together wouldn't ever feel quite right again. To fill the void, she tried to make a model of his father. She decided to have a substitute for her father, probably by finding a real man whom she imagines is like her father. This substitute, the other man is like her father. She doesn’t describe him as black but says that she is a man in black. Though this new man may not have a mustache, he appears like a Hitler, a Nazi (Meinkampf look).
Stanza 14 Lines 66-70
“And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.”
This man is a sadist, wears black, and looks like Hitler and she succumbs to his torture because she longs for her father. The speaker finally fulfills her Electra complex. Basically, the Electra complex is a theory that women seek men who are like their fathers. She marries him, confirming her wedding vows, "I do." So now, she no longer needs her father. She cuts off communication with him, the dead, here. The father and daughter can no longer communicate.
Stanza 15 Lines 71-75
“If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.”
The speaker again asserts her willingness to kill her father but now she says that she has killed two men. It is figurative. She’s killed anyone in reality, but killing here means ending ties, getting rid of, becoming independent, and free of oppression. But who is the second man she has killed? The second man is the man that she modeled after her father and married, and now they are divorced. This second man, her husband is like Hitler, and a vampire, who kept sucking her blood for a year, while they were going through the ordeal of separation. Then she mentions that she has been exploited by him for seven years. A vampire drinking blood is a metaphor for her husband who has been draining her life away, like a vampire would drain his victim's blood. Maybe she thought he was only cruel to her for one year, but upon further thought, she realizes that he's really been cruel for seven, which could be the totality of their marriage or acquaintance. After asserting that she's killed both her father and the man she married (who reminded her of him), she tells her father to lie back, or relax, or accept his defeat.
Stanza 16 Lines 76-80
“There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”
The speaker is addressing the part of her father that is in herself, his memories, and her love for her – to lie back because he's dead. Her cruel father, the devil, Nazi, Hitler, a vampire, has lived past his physical death. He kept sucking her will to live but he must die for good now, or his effect on her must diminish. To do so, a stake has been pushed through his black heart, like a vampire should be killed. She has exorcized or mentally killed him properly this time. In this stanza, the speaker alludes to Bram Stoker’s Dracula in which vampires lived near little villages and hunted the villagers. As he is dead now, the villagers are dancing. They always knew that the vampire was her father, causing all sorts of problems and mysterious disappearances in the village.
In the last line, the speaker asserts her independence from the memories and gloominess because of her father.
In the whole poem of 80 lines, the speaker uses the word ‘Daddy’ six times, twice in the last line, making a stress that now she is free of the bad memories, now she won’t be exploited anymore.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards.
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