SAKSHI, 1220

Q. “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” Critically analyze Plath's poem, ‘Daddy’, in the
context of its final statement.

A. The poem ‘Daddy’ was written by the American poet Sylvia Plath in 1962, four months before her
death. It was published in 1965, in the volume called ‘Ariel’. ‘Daddy’ is written in a confessional mode
and has autobiographical elements. In the poem, the speaker foregrounds her complicated and oppressive
relationship with her Daddy. She attempts to articulate the struggle against the male authorial and
patriarchal figure for any kind of self realization of one’s own identity.

There are autobiographical elements in the poem. Sylvia Plath’s father, Otto Plath, died as a result of
complications from diabetes, when she was eight. In the poem, the mention of Daddy’s “one gray toe” is
a biological reference to Otto Plath’s foot infection. Due to this infection, his leg was amputated in 1940
and soon after he died. The poem ‘Daddy’ is also deeply personal, and its autobiographical echoes and
personal tones are amplified by her journals, semi-autobiographical novel “The Bell Jar”, and many other
poems. “Her father’s authoritarian attitudes and his death have drastically defined Sylvia Plath’s poems”.

The poem has a mixed form. It is considered an Elegy, which is a public and formal articulation of
mourning. The poem deconstructs the male dominated Elegy form. It articulates female loss and
mourning and there is a clear distinction between male written elegies (elegies written by men) and
Plath’s ‘Daddy’. ‘Daddy’ does not celebrate the male figure after death, the way W.H. Auden does in his
‘In memory of W.B. Yeats’. Contrariwise, Plath’s poem is a poem of condemnation, of Daddy - the male
authorial figure that who has died-by the poet persona. The final statement of the poem, “Daddy, daddy
you bastard, I’m through” shuns the legitimacy of the father by calling him “bastard” and signifies the
realization of Daddy as oppressive and brutal by the speaker. Additionally, the poem is a well known
example of confessional poetry. Historically, women have used the confessional mode to articulate
oppression, anger and suffering of living in a patriarchal world. Some examples of this are, Anne
Sexton’s ‘More than Myself’, Adrienne Rich’s ‘Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers’, Margaret Atwood’s ‘This is a
Photograph of Me’ and Esther Morgan’s ‘The Lost Word’. All these poets have used confessional mode
of poetry to create literature out of real life trauma. It is a good paragraph but you could have enhanced it
further by referring to Robert Lowell in the context of confessional poetry.

The title of the poem, ‘Daddy’, in itself is a familial and informal term. It is associated with intimacy,
love and affection. However, the poem overturns the expectations suggested by the title and deconstructs
this patriarchal assumption of the male authorial figure of Daddy as nurturing. The poet persona
associates Daddy with “black shoe”, “marble heavy” and “ghastly statue”. The term is symbolic of the
way women expected experienced patriarchy in the private sphere of family. As Jahan Ramazani states in
a 1993 article, "Daddy, I Have Had to Kill You": Plath, Rage, and the Modern Elegy, through the sub
genre of elegy, Plath voices “anti-patriarchal anger in poetry – the anger initially focused in the familial
embodiment of masculine authority”, i.e. the patriarchal father.

The language of the poem is not consistent. Plath uses a lot of German words in her poem that add
cultural context like, “ach du”, “ich, ich, ich”, “Luftwaffe”, and “Meinkampf”. She uses various poetic
devices like alliteration, repetition, rhyme and layers of images and metaphors that give density to the
poem. The poet persona dismisses Daddy’s argument of fascism and patriarchy as “gobbledygoo”. The
term is a nonsensical one, associated with child speech and indicates to the portrayal of women in
patriarchy as childish and child like. In ‘Daddy’, childish sounds and nursery rhymes are used to scheme
political statements. Furthermore, the poet ends sentences abruptly with dashes a few times, suggesting
the speaker’s inability to articulate herself effectively and her internal battle, “Panzer-man, panzer-man, O
You——”, “If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——”. Good paragraph.

The poet persona has a conflicted relationship with her father and patriarchy. She begins by talking about
Daddy as someone who is oppressive and stifling, (Semicolon rather than comma) he is associated with
supreme authority, “black shoe in which I have lived like a foot”, “barely daring to breathe or achoo”. In
the second and third stanza however, the speaker says, “You died before I had time——”, and “I used to
pray to recover you”, signifying her complicated paternal relationship and inability to move on even after
his death. Her Daddy has only given her a claustrophobic and entrapped existence; she cannot breathe for
thirty years while he is alive (even though he is no longer alive), “I have always been scared of you”. The
speaker was ten when her Daddy is buried and she tries to commit suicide when she turns twenty, just to
reconcile with him, “At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones
would do.”(use / as verse line division) The poet persona struggles to exist without the father; she has lost
meaning in life after his death, as her selfhood is determined by her father’s identity. She struggles with
her own ideas of individuality, femininity and masculinity. Plath explores her personal struggle with these
ideas, in her other poems like ‘Edge’ and ‘Lady Lazarus’.

Sylvia Plath gives different figurations of the dominating male figure in the poem as father, fascist,
teacher, husband, and vampire. “I do, I do” is reminiscent of marriage vows, referring to the quasi father
figure of a husband. The father is also described as a pedagogue, “You stand at the blackboard Daddy”.
At the end, the male figure is described as a blood sucking vampire who sustains himself on the blood of
(not required since you have already used the phrase, blood sucking) women. Through these multiple
imageries, Plath ensures ramification of the reality of male father figure as oppressive, authoritarian and
consumerist, towards the female speaker (Incorrect grammatically and not required in any case).

Despite the effective and powerful use of language and imagery in ‘Daddy’, it has been a matter of great
controversy due to Plath’s pervasive use of the Holocaust as metaphor and imagery. Plath uses the
metaphor to articulate her experience of patriarchy. She criticizes patriarchy by foregrounding its fascist
similarities. Plath is offering a critique of the fascist regime and war machinery used for destructive
purpose and sympathizing with the Jews thatwho suffered in Holocaust. However, her usage of the
Holocaust is argued to be reductive and consumerist. Leon Wieseltier writes, “familiarity with the hellish
subject must be earned not presupposed…Plath did not earn it, she did not respect”. According to Seamus
Heaney, it is so entangled in biographical instances and rampages of other people’s sorrows it simply
overthrows its right to our sympathies.

Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’, however controversial and excessive in its imagery, has been a successful poem
of female articulation of trauma, experienced by women, through the patriarchal male figures that are
familial. In the last stanza of the poem, the speaker realizes what the “villagers always knew” about
Daddy. Her realization comes much later, after a long emotional struggle and price. With the final
statement “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through”, the tortured poem comes to an end, as years after
her father’s death the poet finally decides to let go of his memory and free herself from his oppression.
Sakshi, this is good work, well argued, well structured and well written. You need to expand the
Holocaust images in the poem, a bit more. Minor errors in syntax and argument have been pointed out in
the course of the essay. 7.5/10 SSg 19/11/20

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Sylvia Plath, ‘Daddy’