Review Of The Poem “Daddy” By Sylvia Plath

This poem starts off by the speaker saying that her father no longer does anything anymore and calls him a black shoe. She says that for thirty years she has lived like a foot and has been poor and didn’t dare to breathe or sneeze. She goes on to say that she wanted to kill her dad, but he died before she had the chance. She describes him as heavy and compares him to a statue. She then compares him to the Germans and says that she could never talk to him because her tongue was stuck on barb wire. She compares herself to a Jew and says that she began to talk like a Jew. She then talks about how she was always scared of her dad and that she was ten when he was buried. When she was twenty she said she tried to kill herself but was pulled out of it, and she made a model of him and destroyed it. She ends it with saying that he can rest finally and that the villagers never liked him and danced on his grave.

In the first stanza the speaker uses a simile and says that the way she lived was like a foot in a shoe. She is also using imagery in this stanza by adding that she was poor and lived like that for thirty years. It paints the picture that she lived in rough conditions for that time. She also uses metaphors throughout the poem by comparing her dad to a Nazi and to herself as a Jew. Towards the end of the poem she talks about how her dad was a vampire and how he sucked the blood out of her. This is a metaphor that helps show how she just views him as someone who had just sucked the life out of her.

This story is about the hatred and anger a daughter has towards her father. Although her father is dead, the speaker goes on throughout the poem comparing him to a Nazi and to herself as a Jew. The way she talks in the poem makes it seem that she has kept this inside of her for a long time. She talks about her dad as if he were dominating and talks about how she was never able to talk to him, so this may be a big reason for her suicide attempt when she was twenty. This poem seems to be her way of letting it all out and finally being able to let go of the resentment she has towards him.

This poem reminds me a little of the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The main character’s father was a Nazi soldier and both he and the dad in this poem are viewed as cold and strict. The way the daughter views the dad in this poem also reminds me of the movie It. The main female character in the movie, Beverly, resents her dad because he is controlling and strict just as the dad is viewed in this poem.

This poem also reminds me of the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke. The way the speaker in that poem talks about his dad is negative just like the way the speaker of this poem talks about her dad. Their memories of their dads seem to only consist of negative things.