An Explication Of Sylvia Plath's Daddy

As one of America’s most famous poets, Sylvia Plath’s works have long been discussed and analyzed amongst literary professionals and laymen alike. In Plath’s poem “Daddy”, arguably one of her most important works, she presents a piece chock full of symbols, imagery, and themes worth discussing. In the poem, the speaker is presumably a young woman speaking to her father. Today, many readers make the assumption that “Daddy” is actually more of an autobiography for Plath, and it is considered to be a part of what many call confessional poetry (Uroff 104). People believe this poem is a reflection of Plath’s life because of the glaringly similar detail between the speaker and Plath. Two of the biggest similarities are an oppressive German father
The speaker also beings to create an image of her dead father by comparing him to physical things, as well as actions. When the speaker compares him to a statue (Plath 9), she creates a sense of largeness in relation to her father, not just in the physical sense, but also in a way that makes it clear that he is an all-consuming aspect in her life, dead or alive. This comparison also hones in on the idea that sometimes even in death, a person can have just as much, if not more, impact on one’s life. The speaker, aware of this existing issue, expresses her need to have closure when she says, “I used to pray to recover you” (Plath
She is not able to find this town because it has a common name in the German language, however (Plath 19-23). The speaker also begins to have a very obvious aversion to Germans while on her search of her father’s origins, and she even finds the language to be “obscene” (Plath 30). The obscenity the speaker feels for the German language goes so far as to make her feel like a Jew amidst Germans in the time of Nazi reign, an expression of the discomfort and horror the speaker feels. The speaker begins to more clearly illustrate the level of oppression she feels from her father when she states, “I think I may well be a Jew” (Plath 35) because she has placed herself, theoretically, in the place of a group of people who were oppressed, mistreated, injured, tortured, and killed by German Nazis, and she has placed her father in the group of Nazis. In relation to her father, she later goes on to blatantly say, “I have always been scared of you” (Plath 41), and she finally gives a more clear physical description of him when she states, “And your neat mustache / And your Aryan eye, bright blue” (Plath 43-44). These lines reaffirm the speaker’s idea of her father as a Nazi, and by mentioning his mustache, she goes one step further by paralleling him with an idea of Hitler, who is famously known by his distinctive mustache and evil