Daddy
The poem involves a speaker who has a monolog concerning her father who had died when she was ten years old, but he is still in her mind. In this poem, she explains that she was done with thinking about him. The poem demonstrates a love and hate relationship with both the father and the husband. The word Daddy is ironic in this poem since he is noted to be a bad person who is likened to a Vampire, Devil, and a Nazi. The poem has shown hatred that has developed among the feminists concerning the males.
The tone of the poem is brutal, rough, abusive, and childish. At the end of the poem, she calls her father a bastard, and she is done with him. The rude tone shows that she has done away with him and seems to enjoy that the father had died both physically and even in her heart. The speaker is also brutal in the tone in that she is very angry and cannot even communicate due to the bitterness she has in her heart (Roberts, 2014). She repeats the word ‘ich’ severally, which means ‘I.’ The word is repeated severally for more than four times, and it has the intonation of the gunfire that could have related the Nazi with war. The childish tone is demonstrated in her use of the word ‘Daddy’ very many times. The word is related to how innocent children call their fathers. However, in this poem, the child seems to be very angry concerning the father and having a negative attitude towards him. The speaker shows no respect and formality concerning the father.
The speaker in the poem wants the reader to have a feeling of oppression in the family relationships. She demonstrates the harsh and disturbing issues that she was going through in their family. She had been going through a lot of pressure caused by her father. In the poem, she relates herself to a foot that has lived in a shoe for a very long time; that is more than thirty years. The demonstration shows that she never had freedom to do whatever she wished. She has been working so hard to ensure that she is liberating herself from the oppression.
The speaker in the poem demonstrates a negative attitude towards men. The men in the poem are the father of the speaker and the husband. As a daughter, she has to feel a victim concerning the death of the father. She believed that the father was a God and thus, she seems that something wrong was happening between her and the father. She describes the father in an abusive way (Holbrook, 2014). For example, the use of dark imagery of the Nazi and the demonstration of his character using vampirism. She also calls the father a devil and she gets rid of her physical appearance. Additionally, she has also tried to make his escape from her emotions.
In conclusion, it is clear that most of the females can have hatred towards men who are close to them. The hatred can be caused by the childhood experience with men. For example, the speaker was very constricted by the father before he died and she had been longing for his death. Additionally, feminism has also been transferred to the husband of the speaker. She hated the father, and she wishes to forget him. However, it is not wise to hate a particular group of people just because of a single experience.
References
Holbrook, D. (2014). Sylvia Plath: poetry and existence. A&C Black.
Roberts, N. (2014). Narrative and Voice in Postwar Poetry. Routledge.