Daddy Sylvia Plath - Lecture notes 11 PDF

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Very useful history notes from a top uc lecturer. I took these notes using particular fonts and colour coding which is very aesthetic and easy to follow. These notes are useful for exam preparation, information for essays and to help you become an A student....

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Daddy ~ Sylvia Plath Stanza Summaries Stanza one to three Plath uses various images to describe how the speaker viewed her father. Initially, she sees his memory as suffocating and being trapped in a, ‘black shoe / In which I have lived like a foot’. In stanza two, she depicts her father as being, ‘a bag full of God’. Here, the speaker makes it seem that her father is Godlike, as powerful as a god, and she looks to him as a role model. Also this could refer to how she has to meet his expectations because he is omnipresent. In stanza three, Plath uses the imagery of the sea to emphasise the deep loss the speaker felt and the longing to recover her father or a father figure.

Stanza four to seven The poet Plath in stanza four reveals her inner conflict of how she views her father as a German soldier, with negative connotations by how they attacked Poland, because she hates the image of him and how he is oppressive in her mind their is a battle, by how she wants to forget him, how Poland was “scraped flat by the roller/of wars, wars, wars…” the repetition reveals how this is constantly on her mind but also it emphasises the brutality of the Germans, and how she then thinks of her father as brutal. Then in Stanza five Plath confesses could not tell if her father was a “bad” man because she knew nothing about him because he had died early, she could not tell “where you/put your foot, your root.” She thinks of him as a German soldier, and that he was a villainous man. Lines five and seven are about how there were many men like her father so she can never tell what he did, it is the unknown which occupies her mind. She is locating her father, but she can’t tell what he did. She does not known where she died. Then it progresses to stanza seven by how Plath is hooked by the image of her father in her mind which she has made up because she could never talk to him, by how her tongue, “it stuck in a barbwire snare.” She also says, “I thought every German was you,” this could be that she thought her daddy had committed the atrocities that Germans had during WW2. Could also mean that every time she saw a German it reminded her of her father, he was constantly on her mind. Ich, Ich, is onomatopoeia for the sound of the tongue being caught, but also in German it means, I, I, I (me) so she is stammering on her words. She is unable to communicate strangling her. Stanzas eight to ten In stanza 8 this explains how the speaker feels a victim by how she keeps thinking of her dad, he is a oppressive figure in her mind. She feels abandoned by her father as shown by how the speaker says, “A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen,” she feels unwanted and lonely without her father. By how the speaker says, “I think I may well be a Jew,” this explains that she feels like a victim, and that she has gone through psychological pain of

obsessing over the image of her father. Chuff, can mean displeased, double meaning, or like an engine moving like he is sending her away, like in Tulips. This could also be subconscious how she is feeling sympathy with the people her father may have killed as a German. The Jewish were transported on trains to the concentration camps. She thinks of the struggle between her and her dad, like the conflict between the Germans and Jews. In stanza 9 the speaker is talking about her ancestors of the places she comes from like Tyrol in Austria. This is quite personal, because the poet Sylvia Plath has Austrian ancestry so she can relate to these countries. The speaker may refer to “I may be a bit of a Jew, “ might symbolize how she does not have a sense of belonging because the Jews did not have their own country in WW2, but also that she thinks that she may be a victim of her father oppressive presence in her mind, she is admitting how she is obsessive about her father. Stanza ten is about the fact that the speaker is scared of her German father, and the atrocities he may have committed. She uses personal pronoun to address her father she reveal that even though he is dead he lives on her mind as a horror, a nightmare, “I have always been scared of you” The repetition of ‘and’, shows the speakers obsessing, but also it helps create the chant of the poem. The use of informal gibberish like ‘gobbledygoo,” symbolize that she was scared of him as a child, the image she has of him, and that she is reliving the memory. She is comparing her dad with Hitler due to how much she hates him and how she sees him as a villain, this is very dark imagery. This reveals the horror of male domination, like the life in the 20th century, reflecting Plath’s the poets turbulent with Ted Hughes. Stanzas eleven to fourteen In stanza 11 the speaker states, “Not god but a swastika,” this reveals that over time as the speaker obsessed over her father, she use to admire him and want to live up to his expectations- to be worthy of him, then she began to hate him by how he occupied her mind. “Every woman adores a fascist” - the speaker hates her father and she is scared of him, but in a way she loves and misses him and she wants to know more about him. She misses her dad overpowering her and dominating her, this is the Electra Complex, by how the girl sexualises her father. The repetition of ‘brute’ reveals that she still thinks that her father is bad, perhaps because he occupies her mind in an obsessive way. This is a feminism theme, like in Tulips. In Stanza 12 Plath makes links to her own father by when the speaker says, “you stood at the blackboard, daddy, in the picture I have of you,” because Plath's own dad was a professor. He had the domineering role. A cleft in a chin is referring to the fact she views her father as a devil, due to the saying, “dimple on chin, devil within” This is very negative imagery towards her father and that he was ruining her sanity. In stanza 13 the speaker admits she was heartbroken when her father died when she was young (she never got to know him) This also reflects the death of Plath’s own father’s death, and how she suicided at twenty. The repetition of “back” emphasises that her father is very far away in heaven, but also it creates the chant, since it is repeated three times, that she is exorcising herself from the memory of her father and her father's presence in her mind.

“Even the bones would do,” emphasises in an emotive way that she missed him a lot, which is a contrast because now she wants to forget him, revealing that the memory of her father is oppressing her life, she was exhausted of being drained about his presence in her mind. This is very depressed and obsessive showing that the speaker is not in a healthy state of mind, however, this is more controlled than the Tulip poem, because this is more accusatory than submissive, perhaps reflecting Plath’s stronger state of mind by how she wrote this poem later on in life. In stanza fourteen, the speaker says that she missed her father so much that she married someone like him, that she made a model of her father, in a negative way. The statement of the speaker, “A man in black with a Meinkampf look,” this reveals that it was in fact that it was negative that she married someone like her father, an oppressive man. This is because black has negative connotations of evilness, of being kept in “the dark” with no control, how black absorbs all light, all hope. Stanzas fifteen to sixteen In Stanza fifteen the speaker shows that she recognises that her father is dead, that she will be able to know him and that she should forget him, she has made a negative image of him. This is shown by the extended metaphor of, “the black telephone's off at the root, / The voices just can’t worm through.” This has imagery of the dads graveyard with the worms, like actual worms in the soil. This reveals that she does not want to think of her father anymore and that she has cleansed herself of him. In stanza sixteen, the speaker concludes her point and she reveals the journey of the moment, with an opheny that she is over her father. “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through,” the oxymorons of “daddy” which has affectionate connotations and “bastard” which has negative connotations creates controversy but also this is like a chant, with the final line being of relief and empowerment. She is mocking him in a way, by saying “daddy.” She has only mentioned daddy four times in the poem, so this has a final impact. The imagery of her father and husband being a vampire reveals that she married her husband to quench her need for her father showing the Complex again. For example, she was married to Ted Hughes/...